
Class _ 
Book_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



e r 



The 

University 

of Hard Knocks 



The School J?hat Completes 
Our Education 



"He that overcometh shall inherit all things ; and I will be his 
God, and he shall be my son." — Revelation 21 :7. 



"Sweet are the uses of adversity ; 
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous. 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; 
And thus our life, exempt from public haunt, 
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

—Shakespeare 



A Lyceum and Chautauqua Lec- 
ture delivered since 190 U by Ralph 
Parlette. 



> 



,3" 



%\ 



?\V1 



COPYRIGHT, 1914, 1915, 1917 

By Parlette-Padget Company 

Publishers 

122 S. Michigan Ave. 

Chicago 




MAY -4 =917 



First Edition, September, 1914 
Second Edition, January, 1916 
Third Edition, April, 1917 



©CU482248 



Why It Is Printed 

MORE than a million people have sat in au- 
diences in all parts of the United States and 
have listened to "The University of Hard 
Knocks." It has been delivered to date more than 
twenty-five hundred times upon lyceum courses, at 
chautauquas, teachers' institutes, club gatherings, con- 
ventions and before various other kinds of audiences. 
Ralph Parlette is kept busy year after year lecturing, 
because his lectures deal with universal human ex- 
perience. 

"Can I get the lecture in book form?" That con- 
tinuous question from audiences brought out this book 
in response. Here is the overflow of many deliveries. 

"What is written here is not the way I would write 
it, were I writing a book," says Ralph Parlette. "It 
is the way I say it. The lecture took this unconscious 
colloquial form before audiences. An audience makes 
a lecture, if the lecture survives. I wish I could 
shake the hand of every person who has sat in my 
audiences. And I wish I could tell the lecture com- 
mittees of America how I appreciate the vast amount 
of altruistic work they have done in bringing the 
audiences of America together. For lecture audiences 
are not drawn together, they are pushed together." 

The warm reception given "The University of Hard 
Knocks" by the public, has encouraged the publishers 
to put more of Mr. Parlette's lectures into book form. 
"Big Business" and "Pockets and Paradises" are now 
in preparation as this, the third edition of "The Uni- 
versity of Hard Knocks" comes from the press. 



Ill 



Contents 

Page 

SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS— The lecturer 
the delivery wagon — The sorghum barrel — Audi- 
ence must have place to put lecture — Why so 
many words ix 

The University of Hard Knocks 

I. THE BOOKS ARE BUMPS— Every bump a 
lesson — Why the two kinds of bumps — Descrip- 
tion of University — "Sweet are the uses of Ad- 
versity" — Why children are not interested 1 

II. THE COLLEGE OF NEEDLESS KNOCKS, 
the bumps that we bump into — Getting the coffee- 
pot — Teaching a wilful child — Bumps make us 
"stop, look, listen" — Blind man learns with one 
bump — Going up requires effort — Prodigals 
must be bumped — The fly and the sticky fly- 
paper — "Removed" and "knocked out" 5 

III. THE COLLEGE OF NEEDFUL KNOCKS, 
the bumps that bump into us — Our sorrows and 
disappointments — How the piano was made — 
How the "red mud" becomes razor-blades — The 
world our mirror — The cripple taught by the 
bumps — Every bump brings a blessing — You are 
never down and out 15 

IV. "SHAKE THE BARREL"— How we decide 
our destinies — Why the big ones shake up and 
the little ones shake down — The barrel of life 
sorting people — How we hold our places, go down, 
go up — Good luck and bad luck — The girl who 
went up — The man who went down — The fatal 
rattle — We must get ready to get — Testimonials 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

Page 

and press notices — You cannot uplift people with 
derrick — No laws can equalize — Help people to 
help themselves — We cannot get things till we 
get ready for them 25 

V. GOING UP — How we become great — We must 
get inside greatness — There is no top — We make 
ourselves great by service — The first step at 
hand — All can be greatest — Where to find great 
people — A glimpse of Gunsaulus 47 

VI. THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS"— 
Preparing children for life — Most "advantages" 
are disadvantages — Buying education for chil- 
dren—The story of "Gussie" and "Bill Whackem" 
— Schools and books only give better tools for 
service — "Hard knocks" graduates — Menace of 
America not swollen fortunes but shrunken souls 
— Children must have struggle to get strength 
— Not packhorse work — Helping the turkeys 
killed them — The happiness of work we love — 
Amusement drunkards — Lure of the city — 
Strong men from the country — Must save the 
home towns — A school of struggle — New School 
experiment 58 

VII. THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER"— 
You can't get something for nothing — The fiddle 
and the tuning — How we know things — Trim- 
med at the shell game — My "fool drawer" — 
Getting "selected to receive 1,000 per cent" — 
You must earn what you own — Commencement 
orations — My maiden sermon — The books that 
live have been lived — Singer must live songs — 
Successful songs written from experience — 
Theory and practice — Tuning the strings of 
life 84 

vi 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 



VIII. LOOKING BACKWARD— Memories of the 
price we pay — My first school teaching — Loan- 
ing the deacon my money — Calling the roll of 
my schoolmates — At the grave of the boy I had 
envied — Why Ben Hur won the chariot race — 
Pulling on the oar , 112 

IX. GO ON SOUTH!— The book in the running 
brook — The Mississippi keeps on going south 
and growing greater — We generally start well, 
but stop — Few go on south — The plague of in- 
competents — Today our best day, tomorrow to 
be better — Birthdays are promotions — I am just 
beginning — Bernhardt, Davis, Edison — Moses be- 
gins at eighty — Too busy to bury — Sympathy for 
the "sob squad" — Child sees worst days, not best 
— Waiting for the second table — Better days on 
south — Overcoming obstacles develops power — 
Go on south from principle, not praise — Doing 
duty for the joy of it — Becoming the "Father 

of Waters" — Go on south forever! 128 

X. GOING UP LIFE'S MOUNTAIN— The de- 
feats that are victories — Climbing Mount Lowe 
— Getting above the clouds into the sunshine — 
Each day we rise to larger vision — Getting above 
the night into the eternal day — Going south is 
going upward 159 

* * * 

THE LYCEUM AND CHAUTAUQUA MOVE- 
MENT — Remarkable development in recent 
years — Promotion due to bureaus — The work of 
the lecturer 169 



Vll 



Some Preliminary Remarks 

LADIES and Gentlemen: 
I do not want to be seen in this lecture. I 
want to be heard. I am only the delivery 
wagon. When the delivery wagon comes to 
your house, you are not much interested in how it 
looks; you are interested in the goods it brings you. 
You know some very good goods are sometimes de- 
livered to you in some very poor delivery wagons. 

So in this lecture, please do not pay any attention to 
the delivery wagon — how much it squeaks and wheezes 
and rattles and wabbles. Do not pay much attention 
to the wrappings and strings. Get inside to the goods. 
Really, I believe the goods are good. I believe I am 
to recite to you some of the multiplication table of life 
— not mine, not yours alone, but everybody's. 



I Can Only Pull the Plug! 

Every audience has a different temperature, and 
that makes a lecture go differently before every audi- 
ence. The kind of an audience is just as important as 
the kind of a lecture. A cold audience will make a 
good lecture poor, while a warm audience will make a 
poor lecture good. 

Let me illustrate: 

When I was a boy we had a barrel of sorghum in 
the woodshed. When mother wanted to make ginger- 
bread or cookies, she would send me to the woodshed 
to get a bucket of sorghum from that barrel. 

Some warm September day I would pull the plug 
from the barrel and the sorghum would fairly squirt 
into my bucket. Later in the fall when it was colder, 
I would pull the plug but the sorghum would not 
squirt. It would come out slowly and reluctantly, so 

ix 



SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS 

that I would have to wait a long while to get a little 
sorghum. And on some real cold winter day I would 
pull the plug, but the sorghum would not run at all. 
It would just look out at me. 

I discovered it was the temperature. 

I have brought a barrel of sorghum to this audi- 
ence. The name of the sorghum is "The University of 
Hard Knocks." I can only pull the plug. I cannot 
make it run. That will depend upon the temperature 
of this audience. You can have all you want of it, but 
to get it to running freely, you will have to warm up. 

*P V •*• 

Did You Bring a Bucket? 

No matter how the sorghum runs, you have to have 
a bucket to get it. How much any one gets out of a 
lecture depends also upon the size of the bucket he 
brings to get it in. A big bucket can get filled at a 
very small stream. A little bucket gets little at the 
greatest stream. With no bucket you can get nothing 
at Niagara. 

That often explains why one person says a lecture 
is great, while the next person says he got nothing 
out of it. 

What It's All About 

Here is a great mass of words and sentences and 
pictures to express two or three simple little ideas of 
life, that our education is our growing up from the 
Finite to the Infinite, and that it is done by our own 
personal overcoming, and that we never finish it. 

Have you noticed that no sentence, nor a million 
sentences, can bound life? Have you noticed that 
every statement does not quite cover it? No state- 
ment, no library, can tell all about life. No success 
rule can alone solve the problem. You must average 
it all and struggle up to a higher vision. 



SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS 

We are told that the stomach needs bulk as well 
as nutriment. It would not prosper with the necessary 
elements in their condensed form. So abstract truths 
in their lowest terms do not always promote mental 
digestion like more bulk in the way of pictures and dis- 
cussions of these truths. Here is bulk as well as 
nutriment. 

If you get the feeling that the first personal pro- 
noun is being overworked, I remind you that this is 
more a confession than a lecture. You cannot confess 
without referring to the confesser. 



To Everybody in My Audience 

I like you because I am like you. 

I believe in you because I believe in my- 
self. We are all one family. I believe in 
your Inside, not in your Outside, whoever 
you are, whatever you are, wherever you 
are. 

I believe in the Angel of Good inside 
every block of human marble. I believe it 
must be carved out in The University of 
Hard Knocks. 

I believe all this pride, vanity, selfishness, 
self-righteousness, hypocrisy and human 
frailty are the Outside that must be chipped 
away. 

I believe the Hard Knocks cannot injure 
the Angel, but can only reveal it. 

I hope you are getting your Hard Knocks. 

I care little about your glorious or in- 
glorious past. I care little about your pres- 
ent. I care much about your future, for 
that is to see more of the Angel in you. 



xn 



The University of Hard 
Knocks 



The Books Are Bumps 

THE greatest school is the University of 
Hard Knocks. Its books are bumps. 
Every bump is a lesson. If we learn 
the lesson with one bump, we do not get that 
bump again. We do not need it. We have 
traveled past it. They do not waste the 
bumps. We get promoted to the next bump. 

But if we are "naturally bright," or there is 
something else the matter with us, so that we 
do not learn the lesson of the bump we have 
just gotten, then that bump must come back 
and bump us again. 

Some of us learn to go forward with a few 
bumps, but most of us are "naturally bright" 
and have to be pulverized. 

The tuition in the University of Hard 
Knocks is not free. Experience is the dearest 
teacher in the world. Most of us spend our 
lives in the A-B-C's of getting started. 

We matriculate in the cradle. 

We never graduate. When we stop learning 
we are due for another bump. 

There are two kinds of people — wise people 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

and fools. The fools are the people who think 
they have graduated. 

The playground is all of God's universe. 

The university colors are black and blue. 

The yell is "ouch" repeated ad lib. 



The Need of the Bumps 

When I was thirteen I knew a great deal 
more than I do now. There was a sentence in 
my grammar that disgusted me. It was by 
some foreigner I had never met. His name 
was Shakespeare. It was this: 

"Sweet are the uses of adversity; 
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a priceless jewel in its head; 
And thus our life, exempt from public haunt, 
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

"Tongues in trees," I thought. "Trees can't 
talk! That man is crazy. Books in running 
brooks! Why nobody never puts no books in 
no running brooks. They'd get wet. And 
that sermons in stones! They get preachers 
to preach sermons, and they build houses out 
of stones." 

I was sorry for Shakespeare — when I was 
thirteen. 

But I am happy today that I have traveled a 
little farther. I am happy that I have begun 



THE BOOKS ARE BUMPS 

to learn the lessons from the bumps. I am 
happy that I am learning the sweet tho painful 
lessons of the University of Adversity. I am 
happy that I am beginning to listen. For as I 
learn to listen, I hear every tree speaking, 
every stone preaching and every running 
brook the unfolding of a book. 



Children, I fear you will not be greatly in- 
terested in what is to follow. Perhaps you are 
"naturally bright" and feel sorry for Shakes- 
peare. 

I was not interested when father and mother 
told me these things. I knew they meant all 
right, but the world had moved since they were 
young, and now two and two made seven, be- 
cause we lived so much faster. 

It is so hard to tell young people anything. 
They know better. So they have to get bumped 
just where we got bumped, to learn that two 
and two always makes four, and "whatsoever 
a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 

But if you will remember some of these 
things, they will feel like poultices by and by 
when the bumps come. 



The Two Colleges 

As we get bumped and battered on life's 
pathway, we discover we get two kinds of 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

bumps — bumps that we need and bumps that 
we do not need. 

Bumps that we bump into and bumps that 
bump into us. 

We discover, in other words, that The Uni- 
versity of Hard Knocks has two colleges — The 
College of Needless Knocks and The College of 
Needful Knocks. 

We attend both colleges. 



4 



II 

The College of Needless Knocks 

The Bumps That We Bump Into 

NEARLY all the bumps we get are Need- 
less Knocks. 
There comes a vivid memory of one of 
my early Needless Knocks as I say that. It 
was back at the time when I was trying to 
run our home to suit myself. I sat in the high- 
est chair in the family circle. I was three 
years old and ready to graduate. 

That day they had the little joy and sun- 
shine of the family in his high-chair throne 
right up beside the dinner table. The coffee- 
pot was within grabbing distance. 

I became enamored with that coffee-pot. I 
decided I needed that coffee-pot in my business. 
I reached over to get the coffee-pot. Then I dis- 
covered a woman beside me, my mother. She 
was the most meddlesome woman I had ever 
known. I had not tried to do one thing in three 
years that that woman had not meddled into. 

And that day when I wanted the coffee-pot 
— I did want it. Nobody knows how I desired 
that coffee-pot. "One thing thou lackest," a 
coffee-pot — I was reaching over to get it, that 
woman said, "Don't touch that !" 

The longer I thought about it the more 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

angry I became. What right has that woman 
to meddle into my affairs all the time? I have 
stood this petticoat tyranny three years, and 
it is time to stop it ! 

I stopped it. I got the coffee-pot. I know I 
got the coffee-pot. I got it unanimously. I 
know when I got it and I also know where I 
got it. I got about a gallon of the reddest, 
hottest coffee a bad boy ever spilled over him- 
self. 

O-o^o-o-o-o ! I can feel it yet ! 

There were weeks after that when I was up- 
holstered. They put applebutter on me — and 
coal oil and white-of-an-egg and starch and 
anything else the neighbors could think of. 
They would bring it over and rub it on the 
little joy and sunshine of the family, who had 
gotten temporarily eclipsed. 



Teaching a Wilful Child 

You see, my mother's way was to tell me and 
then let me do as I pleased. She told me not 
to get the coffee-pot and then let me get it, 
knowing that it would burn me. She would 
say, "Don't." Then she would go on with her 
knitting and let me do as I pleased. 

Why don't mothers knit today? 

Mother would say, "Don't fall in the well.'* 
I could go and jump in the well after that and 

6 



THE COLLEGE OF NEEDLESS KNOCKS 

she would not look at me. I do not argue that 
this is the way to raise children, but I insist 
that this was the most kind and effective way 
to rear one stubborn boy I know of. The neigh- 
bors and the ladies' aid society often said my 
mother was cruel with that angel child. But 
the neighbors did not know what kind of an 
insect mother was trying to raise. Mother did 
know. She knew how stubborn and self-willed 
I was. It came from father's "side of the 
house." 

Mother knew that to argue with me was to 
flatter me. Tell me, serve notice upon me, and 
then let me go ahead and get my coffee-pot. 
That was the quickest and kindest way to 
teach me. 

I learned very quickly that if I did not hear 
mother, and heed, a coffee-pot would spill upon 
me. I cannot remember when I disobeyed my 
mother that a coffee-pot of some kind did not 
spill upon me, and I got my blisters. Mother 
did not inflict them. Mother was not much of 
an inflicter. Father attended to that in the 
laboratory behind the parsonage. 



"Stop, Look, Listen" 

And thru the bumps we learn that The Col- 
lege of Needless Knocks runs on the same plan. 
The Voice of Wisdom says to each of us, "Child 

7 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

of humanity, do right, walk in the right path. 
You will be wiser and happier." The tongues 
in the trees, the books in the running brooks 
and the sermons in the stones all repeat it. 

But we are not compelled to walk in the 
right path. We are free im-moral agents. 

We get off the right path. We go down for- 
bidden paths. They seem easier and more at- 
tractive. It is so easy to go downward. We 
slide downward, but we have to make effort to 
go upward. 

Anything that goes downward will run it- 
self. Anything that goes upward has to be 
pushed. 

And going down the wrong path, we get 
bumped harder and harder until we listen. 

We are lucky if we learn the lesson with one 
bump. We are unlucky when we get bumped 
twice in the same place, for it means we are 
making no progress. 

When we are bumped, we should "stop, look, 
listen." "Safety first!" 

One time I paid a seeress two dollars to 
look into my honest palm. She said, "It hain't 
your fault. You wasn't born right. You was 
born under an unlucky star." You don't know 
how that comforted me. It wasn't my fault — 
all my bumps and coffee-pots ! I was just un- 
lucky and it had to be. 

How I had to be bumped to learn better! 
Now when I get bumped I try to learn the les- 

8 



THE COLLEGE OF NEEDLESS KNOCKS 

son of the bump and find the right path, so 
that when I see that bump coming again I can 
say, "Excuse me ; it hath a familiar look," and 
dodge it. 

The seeress is the soothing syrup for mental 
infants. 



Blind Man's Fine Sight 

The other day I watched a blind man go 
down the aisle of the car to get off the train. 
Did you ever study the walk of a blind man? 
He "pussyfooted" it along so carefully. He 
bumped his hand against a seat. Then he did 
what every blind man does, he lifted his hand 
higher and didn't bump any more seats. 

I looked down my nose. "Ralph Parlette," I 
said to myself, "when are you going to learn to 
see as well as that blind man? He learns his 
lesson with one bump, and you have to go 
bumping into the same things day after day 
and wonder why you have so much 'bad luck* \" 



Are You Going Up or Down? 

Let me repeat, things that go downward will 
run themselves. Things that go upward have 
to be pushed. Going upward is overcoming. 
Notice that churches, schools, lyceums, chau- 
tauquas K reform movements — things that 

9 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

go upward — never run themselves. They must 
be pushed all the time. 

( And so with our own lives. Real living is 

J conscious effort to go upward to larger life. 

) If you are making no effort in your life, if 

you are moving in the line of least resistance, 

depend upon it you are going downward. Look 

out for the bumps! 

Look over your community. Note the hand- 
ful of brave, faithful, unselfish souls who are 
carrying the community burdens and pushing 
upward. Note the multitude making little or 
no effort, and even getting in the way of the 
pushers. 

Majorities do not rule. Majorities never 
have ruled. It is the brave minority of think- 
ing, self-sacrificing people that decides the 
tomorrow of communities that go upward. 
Majorities are not willing to make the effort 
to rule themselves. They are content to drift 
and be amused and follow false gods that 
promise something for nothing. They must 
be led — sometimes driven — by minorities. 

People are like sheep. The shepherd can 
lead them to heaven — or to hell. 



Bumping the Prodigals 

Human life is the story of the Prodigal Son. 
We look over the fence of goodness into the 

10 



THE COLLEGE OF NEEDLESS KNOCKS 

mystery of the great unknown world beyond 
and in that unknown realm we fondly imagine 
is happiness. 

Down the great white way of the world go 
the million prodigals, seeking happiness where 
nobody ever found happiness. Their days fill 
up with disappointment, their vision becomes 
dulled. They become anaemic feeding upon 
the husks. 

They just must get their coffee-pot! 

How they must be bumped to think upon 
their ways. Every time we do wrong we get a 
Needless Knock. Every time! We may not 
always get bumped on the outside, but we al- 
ways get bumped on the inside. A bump on 
the conscience is worse than a bump on the 
"noodle." 

"I can do wrong and not get bumped. I have 
no feelings upon the subject," somebody says. 
You can? You poor old sinner, you have 
bumped your conscience numb. That is why 
you have no feelings on the subject. You have 
pounded your soul into a jelly. You don't 
know how badly you are hurt. 

How the old devil works day and night to 
keep people amused and doped so that they 
will not think upon their ways ! How he keeps 
the music and the dazzle going so they will 
not see they are bumping themselves! 

»i* •** •** 
11 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

Consider the Sticky Flypaper 

Did you ever watch a fly get his Needless 
Knocks on the sticky flypaper? 

The last thing Mamma Fly said as Johnny 
went off to the city was, "Remember, son, to 
stay away from the sticky flypaper. That is 
where your poor dear father was lost." 

And Johnny Fly remembers for several 
minutes. But when he sees all the smart 
young flies of his set go over to the flypaper, 
he goes over, too. He gazes down at his face 
in the stickiness. "Ah! how pretty I am! This 
sticky flypaper shows me up better than any- 
thing at home. What a fine place to skate. 
Just see how close I can fly over it and not 
get stuck a bit. Mother is such a silly old 
worryer. She means all right, of course, but 
she isn't up-to-date. We young set of modern 
flies are naturally bright and have so many 
more advantages. You can't catch us. They 
were too strict with me back home." 

You see Johnny fly back and forth and have 
the time of his naturally bright young life. 
Afterwhile, tho, he stubs his toe and lands in 
the stickiness. "Well, well, how nice this is 
on the feet, so soft and soothing!" 

First he puts one foot down and pulls it out. 
That is a lot of fun. It shows he is not a 
prisoner. He is a strong-minded fly. He can 
quit it or play in it, just as he pleases. After 

12 



THE COLLEGE OF NEEDLESS KNOCKS 

while he puts two feet down in the stickiness. 
It is harder to pull them out. Then he puts 
three down and puts down a few more trying 
to pull them out. 

"Really," says Johnny Fly bowing to his 
comrades also stuck around him, "really, boys, 
you'll have to excuse me now. Good-bye!" 
But he doesn't pull loose. He feels tired and 
he sits down in the sticky flypaper. It is a 
fine place to stick around. All his young set 
of flies are around him. He does like the com- 
pany. They all feel the same way — they can 
play in the sticky flypaper or let it alone, just 
as they please, for they are strong-minded 
flies. They have another drink and sing, "We 
won't go home till morning." 

Johnny may get home, but he will leave a 
wing or a leg. Most of them stay. They just 
settle down into the stickiness with sleeping 
sickness. 

The tuition in The College of Needless Knocks 
is very high indeed! 



"Removed" or "Knocked Out"? 

The man who goes to jail ought to congrat- 
ulate himself if he is guilty., It is the man 
who does not get discovered who is to be pitied, 
for he must get some more knocks. 

The world loves to write resolutions of re- 

13 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

spect. How often we write, "Whereas, it has 
pleased an all-wise Providence to remove," 
when we might reasonably ask whether the 
victim was "removed" or merely "knocked out." 
There is a good deal of suicide charged up 
to Providence. 



14 



m 

The College of Needful Knocks 

The Bumps That Bump Into Us 

BUT occasionally all of us get bumps that 
we do not bump into. They bump into 
us. They are the guideboard knocks that 
point us to the higher pathway. 

You were bumped yesterday or years ago. 
Maybe the wound has not yet healed. Maybe 
you think it never will heal. You wondered 
why you were bumped. Some of you in this 
audience are just now wondering why. 

You were doing right — doing just the best 
you knew how — and yet some blow came 
crushing upon you and gave you cruel pain. 

It broke your heart. You have had your 
heart broken. I have had my heart broken 
more times than I care to talk about now. 
Your home was darkened, your plans were 
wrecked, you thought you had nothing more 
to live for. 

I am like you. I have had more trouble 
than anybody else. I have never known any- 
one who had not had more trouble than any- 
one else. 

But I am discovering that life only gets good 
after we have been killed a few times. Each 
death is a larger birth. 

15 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

We all must learn, if we have not already 
learned, that these blows are lessons in The 
College of Needful Knocks. They point upward 
to a higher path than we have been traveling. 

In other words, we are raw material. You 
know what raw material is — material that 
needs more Needful Knocks to make it more 
useful and valuable. 

The clothing we wear, the food we eat, the 
house we live in, all have to have the Needful 
Knocks to become useful. And so does human- 
ity need the same preparation for greater use- 
fulness. 

I should like to know every person in this 
audience. But the ones I should most appre- 
ciate knowing are the ones who have known 
the most of these knocks — who have faced the 
great crises of life and have been tried in the 
crucibles of affliction. For I am learning that 
these lives are the gold tried in the fire. 



The Sorrows of the Piano 

See the piano on this stage ? Good evening, 
Mr. Piano. I am glad to see you. You are 
so shiny, beautiful, valuable and full of music, 
if properly treated. 

Do you know how you got upon this stage, 
Mr. Piano? You were bumped here. This is 

16 



THE COLLEGE OF NEEDFUL KNOCKS 

no reflection upon the janitor. You became a 
piano by the Needful Knocks. 

I can see you back in your callow beginnings, 
when you were just a tree — a tall, green tree. 
You were green! Only green things grow. 
Did you get the meaning of that, children? 1 
hope you are green. 

There you stood in the forest, a perfectly 
good, green young tree. You got your lessons, 
combed your hair, went to Sunday school and 
were the best young tree you could be. 

That is why you were bumped — because 
you were good! There came a man into the 
woods with an ax, and he looked for the best 
trees there to bump. He bumped you — hit 
you with the ax ! How it hurt you ! And how 
unjust it was! He kept on hitting you. "The 
operation was just terrible." Finally you fell, 
crushed, broken, bleeding. 

It is a very sad story. They took you all 
bumped and bleeding to the sawmill and they 
bumped and ripped you more. They cut you 
in pieces and hammered you day by day. 

They did not bump the little, crooked, dis- 
sipated, cigaret-stunted trees. They were not 
worth bumping. 

But shake, Mr. Piano. That is why you are 
on this stage. You were bumped here. All 
the beauty, harmony and value were bumped 
into you. 

17 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

The Sufferings of the Red Mud 

One day I was up the Missabe road about a 
hundred miles north of Duluth, Minnesota, and 
came to a hole in the ground. It was a big 
hole — about a half-mile of hole. There were 
steam-shovels at work throwing out of that 
hole what I thought was red mud. 

"Kind sir, why are they throwing that red 
mud out of that hole?" I asked a native. 

"That hain't red mud. That's iron ore, an' 
it's the best iron ore in the world." 

"What is it worth?" 

"It hain't worth nothin' here; that's why 
they're movin' it away." 

There's red mud around every community 
that "hain't worth nothin' " until you move it 
— send it to college or somewhere. 

Not very long after this, near Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania, I saw some of this same red 
mud. It had been moved over the Great Lakes 
and the rails to what they call a blast furnace, 
the technological name of which being The 
College of Needful Knocks for Red Mud. 

I watched this red mud matriculate into a 
great hopper with limestone, charcoal and 
other textbooks. Then they corked it up and 
school began. They roasted it. It is a great 
thing to be roasted. 

When it was done roasting they stopped. 
Have you noticed that they always stop when 

18 



THE COLLEGE OF NEEDFUL KNOCKS 

anything is done roasting ? If we are yet get- 
ting roasted, perhaps we are not done! 

Then they pulled the plug out of the bottom 
of the college and held promotion exercises. 
The red mud squirted out into the sand. It 
was not red mud now, because it had been 
roasted. It was a freshman — pig iron, worth 
more than red mud, because it had been 
roasted. 

Some of the pig iron went into another de- 
partment, a big teakettle, where it was again 
roasted, and now it came out a sophomore — 
steel, worth more than pig iron. 

Some of the sophomore steel went up into 
another grade where it was roasted yet again 
and rolled thin into a junior. Some of that 
went on up and up, at every step getting more 
pounding and roasting and affliction. 

It seemed as tho I could hear the suffering 
red mud crying out, "0, why did they take me 
away from my happy hole-in-the-ground ? Why 
do they pound me and break my heart? I have 
been good and faithful. 0, why do they roast 
me? 0, I'll never get over this!" 

But after they had given it a diploma — a 
pricemark telling how much it had been roasted 
— they took it proudly all over the world, la- 
beled "Made in America." They hung it in 
show windows, they put it in glass cases. Many 
people admired it and said, "Isn't that fine 

19 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

work!" They paid much money for it now. 
They paid the most money for what had been 
roasted the most. 

If a ton of that red mud had become watch- 
springs or razor-blades, the price had gone up 
into thousands of dollars. 

My friends, you and I are the raw material, 
the green trees, the red mud. The Needful 
Knocks are necessary to make us serviceable. 

Every bump is raising our price. Every 
bump is disclosing a path to a larger life. The 
diamond and the chunk of soft coal are exactly 
the same material, say the chemists. But the 
diamond has gone to The College of Needful 
Knocks more than has her crude sister of the 
coal-scuttle. 

There is no human diamond that has not 
been crystallized in the crucibles of affliction. 
There is no gold that has not been refined in 
the fire. 



Cripple Taught by Bumps 

One evening when I was trying to lecture in 
a chautauqua tent in Illinois, a crippled woman 
was wheeled into the tent and brought right 
down to the foot of the platform. The subject 
was The University of Hard Knocks. Present- 
ly the cripple's face was shining brighter than 
the footlights. 

She knew about the knocks! 
20 



THE COLLEGE OF NEEDFUL KNOCKS 

Afterwards I went to her. "Little lady, I 
want to thank you for coming here. I have 
the feeling that I spoke the words, but you are 
the lecture itself." 

What a smile she gave me! "Yes, I know 
about the hard knocks," she said. "I have 
been in pain most of my life. But I have 
learned all that I know sitting in this chair. 
I have learned to be patient and kind and loving 
and brave." 

They told me this crippled woman was the 
sweetest-spirited, best-loved person in the town. 

But her mother petulantly interrupted me. 
She had wheeled the cripple into the tent. She 
was tall and stately. She was well-gowned. 
She lived in one of the finest homes in the city. 
She had .everything that money could buy. 
But her money seemed unable to buy the frown 
from her face. 

"Mr. Lecture Man," she said, "why is every- 
body interested in my daughter and nobody 
interested in me ? Why is my daughter happy 
and why am I not happy? My daughter is 
always happy and she hasn't a single thing to 
make her happy. I am not happy. I have not 
been happy for years. Why am I not happy ?" 

What would you have said? Just on the 
spur of the moment, I said, "Madam, I don't 
want to be unkind, but I really think the rea- 
son you are not happy is that you haven't 
been bumped enough." 

21 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

I discover when I am unhappy and selfish 
and people don't use me right, I need another 
bump. 

The cripple girl had traveled ahead of her 
jealous mother. For selfishness cripples us 
more than paralysis. 



Schools of Sympathy 

When I see a long row of cots in a hospital 
or sanitarium, I want to congratulate the pa- 
tients lying there. They are learning the prec- 
ious lessons of patience, sympathy, love, faith 
and courage. They are getting the education 
in the humanities the world needs more than 
tables of logarithms. Only those who have 
suffered can sympathize. They are to become 
a precious part of our population. The world 
needs them more than libraries and founda- 
tions. 



The Silver Lining 

There is no backward step in life. What- 
ever experiences come to us are truly new 
chapters of our education if we are willing to 
learn them. 

We think this is true of the good things that 
come to us, but we do not want to think so of 
the bad things. Yet we grow more in lean 



THE COLLEGE OF NEEDFUL KNOCKS 

years than in fat years. In fat years we put 
it in our pockets. In lean years we put it in 
our hearts. Material and spiritual prosperity 
do not often travel hand-in-hand. When we 
become materially very prosperous, so many 
of us begin to say, "Is not this Babylon that 
I have builded?" And about that time there 
comes some handwriting on the wall and a 
bump to save us. 

Think of what might happen to you today. 
Your home might bum. We don't want your 
home to burn, but somebody's home is burning 
just now. A conflagration might sweep your 
town from the map. Your business might 
wreck. Your fortune might be swept away. 
Your good name might be tarnished. Bereave- 
ment might take from you the one you love 
most. 

You would never know how many real 
friends you have until then. But look out! 
Some of your friends would say, "I am so 
sorry for you. You are down and out." Do 
not believe that you are down and out, for it 
is not true. The old enemy of humanity wants 
you to believe you are down and out. He 
wants you to sympathize with yourself. You 
are never down and out ! 

The truth is, another chapter of your real 
education has been opened. Will you read the 
lesson of the Needful Knocks? 

23 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

A great conflagration, a cyclone, a railroad 
wreck, an epidemic or other public disaster 
brings sympathy, bravery, brotherhood and 
love in its wake. 

There is a silver lining to every hard knocks 
cloud. 

Out of the trenches of the Great War come 
nations chastened by sacrifice and purged of 
their dross. 



24 



IV 

"Shake The Barrel" 

How We Decide Our Destinies 

NOW as we learn the lessons of the Need- 
less and the Needful Knocks, we get 
wisdom, understanding, happiness, 
strength, success and greatness. We go up in 
life. We become educated. Let me bring you 
a picture of it. 

One day the train stopped at a station to 
take water. Beside the track was a grocery 
with a row of barrels of apples in front. There 
was one barrel full of big, red, fat apples. I 
rushed over and got a sack of the big, red, fat 
apples. Later as the train was under way, I 
looked in the sack and discovered there was 
not a big, red, fat apple there. 

All I could figure out was that there was only 
one layer of the big, red, fat apples on the top, 
and the groceryman, not desiring to spoil his 
sign, had reached down under the top layer. 
He must have reached to the bottom, for he 
gave me the worst mess of runts and windfalls 
I ever saw in one sack. The things I said 
about the grocery business must have kept the 
recording angel busy. 

Then I calmed down. Did the groceryman 
do that on purpose? Does the groceryman 

25 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

ever put the big apples on top and the little 
ones down underneath? 

Do you? Is there a groceryman in the 
audience ? 

Man of sorrows, you have beeen slandered. 
It never occurred to me until that day on the 
train that the groceryman does not put the big 
ones on top and the little ones down under- 
neath. He does not need to do it. It does 
itself. It is the shaking of the barrel that 
pushes the big ones up and the little ones down. 



Shake to Their Places 

You laugh? You don't believe that? May- 
be your roads are so good and smooth that 
things do not shake on the road to town. But 
back in the Black Swamp of Ohio we had cor- 
duroy roads. Did you ever see a corduroy 
road? It was a layer of logs in the mud. 
Riding over it was the poetry of motion ! The 
wagon "hit the high spots." And as I hauled 
a wagon-bed full of apples to the cider-mill over 
a corduroy road, the apples sorted out by the 
jolting. The big apples would try to get to the 
top. The little, runty apples would try to hold 
a mass meeting at the bottom. 

I saw that for thirty years before I saw it. 
Did you ever notice how long you have to see 
most things before you see them? I saw that 

26 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

when I played marbles. The big marbles would 
shake to the top of my pocket and the little 
ones would rattle down to the bottom. 

You children try that tomorrow. Do not 
wait thirty years to learn that the big ones 
shake up and the little ones shake down. Put 
some big ones and some little things of about 
the same density in a box or other container 
and shake them. You will see the larger 
things shake upward and the smaller shake 
downward. You will see every thing shake to 
the place its size determines. A little larger 
one shakes a little higher, and a little smaller 
one a little lower. 

When things find their place, you can shake 
on till doomsday, but you cannot change the 
place of one of the objects. 

Mix them up again and shake. Watch them 
all shake back as they were before, the largest 
on top and the smallest at the bottom. 



Lectures in Cans 

At this place the lecturer exhibits a glass jar more 
than half-filled with small white beans and a few wal- 
nuts. 

Let us try that right on the platform. Here 
is a glass jar and inside of it you see two sizes 
of objects — a lot of little white beans and 
some walnuts. You will pardon me for bring- 
ing such a simple and crude apparatus before 

27 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

you in a lecture, but I ask your forbearance. 
I am discovering that we can hear faster thru 
the eye than thru the ear. I want to make 
this so vivid that you will never forget it, and 
I do not want these young people to live thirty 
years before they see it. 

If there are sermons in stones, there must be 
lectures in cans. This is a canned lecture. Let 
the can talk to you awhile. 

You note as I shake the jar the little beans 
quickly settle down and the big walnuts shake 
up. Not one bean asks, "Which way do I go ?" 
Not one walnut asks, "Which way do I go?" 
Each one automatically goes the right way. 
The little ones go down and the big ones go'up. 

Note that I mix them all up and then shake. 
Note that they arrange themselves just as 
they were before. 

Suppose those objects could talk. I think 
I hear that littlest bean down in the bottom 
saying, "Help me! Help me! I am so unfor- 
tunate and low down. I never had no chance 
like them big ones up there. Help me up." 

I say, "Yes, you little bean, I'll help you." 
So I lift him up to the top. See! I have 
boosted him. I have uplifted him. 

See, the can shakes. Back to the bottom 
shakes the little bean. And I hear him say, 
"King's ex! I slipped. Try that again and 
I'll stay on top." So I put him back again on 
top. 

28 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

The can shakes. The little bean again 
shakes back to the bottom. He is too small to 
stay up. He cannot stand prosperity. 

Then I hear Little Bean say, "Well, if I can- 
not get to the top, you make them big ones 
come down. Give every one an equal chance." 

So I say, "Yes, sir, Little Bean. Here, you 
big ones on top, get down. You Big Nuts get 
right down there on a level with Little Bean !" 
And you see I put them down. 

But I shake the can, and the big ones go 
right back to the top with the same shakes 
that send the little ones back to the bottom. 

There is only one way for those objects to 
change their place in the can. Lifting them 
up or putting them down will not do it. But 
change their size! 

Equality of position demands equality of 
size. Let the little one grow bigger and he 
will shake up. Let the big one grow smaller 
and he will shake down. 



The Shaking Barrel of Life 

0, fellow apples! We are all apples in the 
barrel of life on the way to the market place 
of the future. It is a corduroy road and the 
barrel shakes all the time. 

In the barrel are big apples, little apples, 
freckled apples, speckled apples, green apples, 

29 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

and dried apples. A bad boy on the front row 
shouted the other night, "And rotten apples!" 

In other words, all the people of the world 
are in the great barrel of life. That barrel is 
shaking all the time. Every community is 
shaking, every place is shaking. The offices, 
the shops, the stores, the schools, the pulpits, 
the homes — every place where we live or work 
is shaking. Life is a constant survival of the 
fittest. 

The same law that shakes the little ones 
down and the big ones up in that can is shak- 
ing every person to the place he fits in the 
barrel of life. It is sending small people down 
and great people up. 

And do you not see that we are very foolish 
when we want to be lifted up to some big place, 
or when we want some big person to be put \ 
down to some little place? We are foolishly 
trying to overturn the eternal law of life. 

We shake right back to the places our size 
determines. We must get ready for places be- 
fore we can get them and keep them. 

The very worst thing that can happen to 
anybody is to be artificially boosted up into 
some place where he rattles. 

I hear a good deal about destiny. Some peo- 
ple seem to think destiny is something like a 
train and if we do not get to the depot in time 
our train of destiny will run off and leave us, 

30 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

and we will have no destiny. There is destiny 
— that jar. 

If we are small we shall have a small destiny. 
If we are great we shall have a great destiny. 
We cannot dodge our destiny. 



Kings and Queens of Destiny 

The objects in that jar cannot change their 
size. But thank God, you and I are not help- 
less victims of blind fate. We are not crea- 
tures of chance. We have it in our hands to 
decide our destiny as we grow or refuse to 
grow. 

We shake down if we become small ; we shake 
up if we become great. And when we have 
reached the place our size determines, we stay 
there so long as we stay that size. 

If we wish to change our place, we must first 
change our size. If we wish to go down, we 
must grow smaller and we shall shake down. 
If we wish to go up, we must grow greater, and 
we shall shake up. 

Each person is doing one of three things 
consciously or unconsciously. 

1. He is holding his place. 

2. He is going down. 

3. He is going up. 

In order to hold his place he must hold his 
size. He must fill the place. If he shrinks up 

31 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

he will rattle. Nobody can stay long where he 
rattles. Nature abhors a rattler. He shakes 
down to a smaller place. 

In order to stay the same size he must grow 
enough each day to supply the loss by evapor- 
ation. Evaporation is going steadily on in 
lives as well as in liquids. If we are not grow- 
ing any, we are rattling. 



We Compel Promotion 

So you young people should keep in mind 
that you will shake into the places you fit. 
And when you are in your places — in stores, 
shops, offices or elsewhere, if you want to hold 
your place you must keep growing enough to 
keep it tightly filled. 

If you want a greater place, you simply grow 
greater and they cannot keep you down. You 
do not ask for promotion, you compel promo- 
tion. You grow greater, enlarge your dimen- 
sions, develop new capabilities, do more than 
you are paid to do— -overfill your place, and 
you shake up to a greater place. 

I believe if I were so fortunate or unfortu- 
nate as to have a number of people working for 
me, I would have a jar in my office filled with 
various sizes of objects. When an employee 
would come into the office and say, "Isn't it 
about time I was getting a raise?" I would say, 

32 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

"Go shake the jar, Charlie. That is the way 
you get raised. As you grow greater you won't 
need to ask to be promoted. You will promote 
yourself." 

"Good Luck" and "Bad Luck" 

This jar tells me so much about luck. I have 
noted that the lucky people shake up and the 
unlucky people shake down. That is, the lucky 
people grow great and the unlucky people 
shrivel and rattle. 

Notice as I bump this jar. Two things hap- 
pened. The little ones shook down and the 
big ones shook up. The bump that was bad 
luck to the little ones was good luck to the big 
ones. The same bump was both good luck and 
bad luck. 

Luck does not depend upon the direction of 
the bump, but upon the size of the bump-ee ! 



The "Lucky" One 

So everywhere you look you see the barrel 
sorting people according to size. Every busi- 
ness concern can tell you stories like that of the 
Chicago house where a number of young ladies 
worked. Some of them had been there for a 
long time. There came a raw, green Dutch girl 
from the country. It was her first office expe- 
rience, and she got the bottom job. 

33 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

The other girls poked fun at her and played 
jokes upon her because she was so green. 

Do you remember that green things grow? 

"Is not she the limit?" they oft spake one 
to another. She was. She made many blund- 
ers. But it is now recalled that she never 
made the same blunder twice. She learned 
the lesson with one helping to the bumps. 

And she never "got done." When she had 
finished her work, the work she had been put 
at, she would discover something else that 
ought to be done, and she would go right on 
working, contrary to the rules of the union! 
Without being told, mind you. She had that 
rare faculty the world is bidding for — initia- 
tive. 

The other girls "got done." When they had 
finished the work they had been put at, they 
would wait — 0, so patiently they would wait 
— to be told what to do next. 

Within three months every other girl in that 
office was asking questions of the little Dutch 
girl. She had learned more about business in 
three months than the others had learned in 
all the time they had been there. Nothing 
ever escaped her. She had become the most 
capable girl in the office. 

The barrel did the rest. Today she is giv- 
ing orders to all of them, for she is the office 
superintendent. 

The other girls feel hurt about it. They 
84 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

will tell you in confidence that it was the rank- 
est favoritism ever known. "There was noth- 
ing fair about it. Jennie ought to have been 
made superintendent. Jennie had been here 
four years." 

The "Unlucky" One 

The other day in a paper-mill I was stand- 
ing beside a long machine making shiny super- 
calendered paper. I asked the man working 
there some questions about the machine, which 
he answered fairly well. Then I asked him 
about a machine in the next room. He said, 
"I don't know nothing about it, boss, I don't 
work in there." 

I asked him about another process, and he 
replied, "I don't know nothing about it, I never 
worked in there." I asked him about the pulp- 
mill. He replied, "No, I don't know nothing 
about that, neither. I don't work in there." 
And he did not betray the least desire to know 
anything about anything. 

"How long have you worked here?" 

"About twelve years." 

Going out of the building, I asked the fore- 
man, "Do you see that man over there at the 
supercalendered machine?" pointing to the 
man who didn't know. "Is he a human be- 
ing?" 

The foreman's face clouded. "I hate to talk 
35 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

to you about that man. He is one of the kind- 
est-hearted men we ever had in the works, but 
we've got to let him go. We're afraid he'll 
break the machine. He isn't interested, does 
not learn, doesn't try to learn." 

So he had begun to rattle. Nobody can stay 
where he rattles. It is grow or go. 



Life's Barrel the Leveler 

So books could be filled with just such stories 
of how people have gone up and down. You 
may have noticed two brothers start with the 
same chance, and presently notice that one is 
going up and the other is going down. 

Some of us begin life on the top branches, 
right in the sunshine of popular favor, and 
get our names in the blue-book at the start. 
Some of us begin down in the shade on the bot- 
tom branches, and we do not even get invited. 
We often become discouraged as we look at 
the top-branchers, and we say, "0, if I only had 
his chance! If I were only up there I might 
amount to something. But I am too low 
down." 

We can grow. Everybody can grow. 

And afterwhile we are all in the barrel of 
life, shaken and bumped about. There the 
real people do not often ask us, "On what 
branch of that tree did you grow?" But 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

they often inquire, "Are you big enough to fill 
this place?" * * * 

The Fatal Rattle! 

Now life is mainly routine. You and I and 
everybody must go on doing pretty much the 
same things over and over. Every day we 
appear to have about the same round of du- 
ties. 

But if we let life become routine, we are 
shaking down. The very routine of life must 
every day flash a new attractiveness. We 
must be learning new things and discovering 
new joys in our daily routine or we become 
unhappy. If we go on doing just the same 
things in the same way day after day, think- 
ing the same thoughts, our eyes glued to pre- 
cedents — just turning round and round in our 
places and not growing any, pretty soon we 
become mere machines. We wear smaller. 
The joy and juice go out of our lives. We 
shrivel and rattle. 

The success, joy and glory of life are in 
learning, growing, going forward and upward. 
That is the only way to hold our place. 

The farmer must be learning new things 
about farming to hold his place this progres- 
sive age as a f aimer. The merchant must be 
growing into a greater, wiser merchant to hold 
his place among his competitors. The minis- 
ter must be getting larger visions of the min- 

37 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

istry as he goes back into the same old pulpit 
to keep on filling it. The teacher must be see- 
ing new possibilities in the same old school- 
room. The mother must be getting a larger 
horizon in her homemaking. 

We only live as we grow and learn. When 
anybody stays in the same place year after 
year and fills it, he does not rattle. 

Unless the place is a grave! 

I shiver as I see the pages of school adver- 
tisements in the journals labeled "Finishing 
Schools," and "A Place to Finish Your Child." 
I know the schools generally mean all right, 
but I fear the students will get the idea they 
are being finished, which finishes them. We 
never finish while we live. A school finishing 
is a commencement, not an end-ment. 

I am sorry for the one who says, "I know 
all there is to know about that. You can't 
tell me anything about that." He is generally 
rattling. The greater and wiser the man, the 
more anxious he is to be told. 

I am sorry for the one who struts around 
saying, "I own the job. They can't get along 
without me." For I feel that they are getting 
ready to get along without him. That noise 
you hear is the death-rattle in his throat. 

Big business men keep their ears open for 
rattles in their machinery. 

I am sorry for the man, community or insti- 
tution that spends much time pointing back- 

38 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

ward with pride and talking about "in my 
day !" For it is mostly rattle. The live one's 
"my day" is today and tomorrow. The dead 
one's is yesterday. 



We Must Get Ready to Get 

We young people come up into life wanting 
great places. I would not give much for a 
young person (or any other person) who does 
not want a great place. I would not give much 
for anybody who does not look forward to 
greater and better things tomorrow. 

We often think the way to get a great place 
is just to go after it and get it. If we do not 
have pull enough, get some more pull. Get 
some more testimonials. 

We think if we could only get into a great 
place we would be great. But unless we have 
grown as great as the place we would be a 
great joke, for we would rattle. And when we 
have grown as great as the place, that sized 
place will generally come seeking us. 

We do not become great by getting into a 
great place, any more than a boy becomes a 
man by getting into his father's boots. He is 
in great boots, but he rattles. He must grow 
greater feet before he gets greater boots. But 
he must get the feet before he gets the boots. 

We must get ready for things before we get 
them. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

All life is preparation for greater things. 

Moses was eighty years getting ready to 
do forty years work. The Master was thirty 
years getting ready to do three years work. 
So many of us expect to get ready in "four 
easy lessons by mail." 

We can be a pumpkin in one summer, with 
the accent on the "punk." We can be a mush- 
room in a day, with the accent on the "mush." 
But we cannot become an oak that way. 

The world is not greatly impressed by tes- 
timonials. The man who has the most testi- 
monials generally needs them most to keep him 
from rattling. A testimonial so often becomes 
a crutch. 

Many a man writes a testimonial to get rid 
of somebody. "Well, I hope it will do him 
some good. Anyhow, I have gotten him off 
my hands." I heard a Chicago superintendent 
say to his foreman, "Give him a testimonial 
and fire him!" 

It is dangerous to overboost people, for the 

higher you boost them the farther they will 

fall. 

* * * 

The Menace of the Press-Notice 

Now testimonials and press-notices very 
often serve useful ends. In lyceum work, in 
teaching, in very many lines, they are often 
useful to introduce a stranger. A letter of in- 

40 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

troduction is useful. A diploma, a degree, a 
certificate, a license, are but different kinds of 
testimonials. 

The danger is that the hero of them may 
get to leaning upon them. Then they become 
a mirror for his vanity instead of a monitor 
for his vitality. 

Most testimonials and press-notices are 
frank flatteries. They magnify the good points 
and say little as possible about the bad ones. 
I look back over my lyceum life and see that 
I hindered my progress by reading my press- 
notices instead of listening to the verdict of 
my audiences. I avoided frank criticism. It 
would hurt me. Whenever I heard an adverse 
criticism, I would go and read a few press- 
notices. "There, I am all right, for this clip- 
ping says I am the greatest ever, and should 
he return, no hall would be able to contain the 
crowd." 

And my vanity bump would again rise. 

Alas ! How often I have learned that when 
I did return the hall that was filled before was 
entirely too big for the audience ! The editors 
of America — God bless them! They are al- 
ways trying to boost a home enterprise — not 
for the sake of the imported attraction but for 
the sake of the home folks who import it. 

We must read people, not press-notices. 

When you get to the place where you can 
41 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

stand aside and "see yourself go by" — when 
you can keep still and see every fibre of you and 
your work mercilessly dissected, shake hands 
with yourself and rejoice, for the kingdom of 
success is yours. 

The Artificial Uplift 

There are so many loving, sincere, foolish, 
cruel uplift movements in the land. They 
spring up, fail, wail, disappear, only to be suc- 
ceeded by twice as many more. They fail be- 
cause instead of having the barrel do the up- 
lifting, they try to do it with a derrick. 

The victims of the artificial uplift cannot 
stay uplifted. They rattle back, and "the last 
estate of that man is worse than the first." 

You cannot uplift a beggar by giving him 
alms. You are using the derrick. We must 
feed the hungry and clothe the naked, but that 
is not helping them, that is propping them. 
The beggar who asks you to help him does not 
want to be helped. He wants to be propped. 
He wants you to license him and professional- 
ize him as a beggar. 

You can only help a man to help himself. 
Help him to grow. You cannot help many peo- 
ple, for there are not many people willing to be 
helped on the inside. Not many willing to 
grow up. 

When Peter and John went up to the temple 
42 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

they found the lame beggar sitting at the gate 
Beautiful. Every day the beggar had been 
"helped." Every day as they laid him at the 
gate people would pass thru the gate and see 
him. He would say, "Help me I" "Poor man," 
they would reply, "you are in a bad fix. Here 
is help," and they would throw him some 
money. 

And so every day that beggar got to be more 
of a beggar. The public "helped" him to be 
poorer in spirit, more helpless and a more hope- 
less cripple. No doubt he belonged after a few 
days of the "helping" to the Jerusalem Beg- 
gars' Union and carried his card. Maybe he 
paid a commission for such a choice beggars' 
beat. 

But Peter really helped him. "Silver and 
gold have I none; but such as I have give I 
thee : In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth 
rise up and walk." 



Fix the People, Not the Barrel 

I used to say, "Nobody uses me right. No- 
body gives me a chance." But if chances had 
been snakes, I would have been bitten a hun- 
dred times a day. We need, oculists*, not 
portunities. 

I used to work on the "section" and get a 
dollar and fifteen cents a day. I rattled there. 

43 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

I did not earn my dollar fifteen. I tried to see 
how little I could do and look like I was work- 
ing. I was the Artful Dodger of Section Six- 
teen. When the whistle would blow — 0, joy- 
ful sound ! — I would leave my pick hang right 
up in the air. I would not bring it down again 
for a soulless corporation. 

I used to wonder as I passed Bill Barlow's 
bank on the way down to the section-house, 
why I was not president of that bank. I won- 
dered why I was not sitting upon one of those 
mahogany seats instead of pumping a hand- 
car. I was naturally bright. I used to say 
"If the rich wasn't getting richer and the poor 
poorer, I'd be president of a bank." 

Did you ever hear that line of conversation? 
It generally comes from somebody who rattles 
where he is. 

I am so glad now that I did not get to be 
president of the bank. They are glad, too! I 
would have rattled down in about fifteen min- 
utes, down to the peanut row, for I was only a 
peanut. Remember, the hand-car job is just 
as honorable as the bank job, but as I was not 
faithful over a few things, I would have rattled 
over many things. 

The fairy books love to tell about some clod- 
hopper suddenly enchanted up into a king. But 
life's good fairies see to it that the clodhopper 
is enchanted into readiness for kingship before 
he lands upon the throne. 

44 



SHAKE THE BARREL 

The only way to rule others is to learn to rule 
ourself. 

I used to say, "Just wait till I get to Con- 
gress." I think they are all waiting! "I'll fix 
things. I'll pass laws requiring all apples to 
be the same size. Yes, I'll pass laws to turn 
the barrel upside down, so the little ones will 
be on the top and the big ones will be at the 
bottom." 

But I had not seen that it wouldn't matter 
which end was the top, the big ones would 
shake right up to it and the little ones would 
shake down to the bottom. 

The little man has the chance now, just as 
fast as he grows. You cannot fix the barrel. 
You can only fix the people inside the barrel. 

Have you ever noticed that the man who is 
not willing to fix himself, is the one who wants 
to get the most laws passed to fix other people? 
He wants something for nothing. 



That Cruel Fate 

0, I am so glad I did not get the things I 
wanted at the time I wanted them! They 
would have been coffee-pots. Thank goodness, 
we do not get the coffee-pot until we are ready 
to handle it. 

Today you and I have things we couldn't 
have yesterday. We just wanted them yes- 

45 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

terday. 0, how we wanted them ! But a cruel 
fate would not let us have them. Today we 
have them. They come to us as naturally to- 
day, and we see it is because we have grown 
ready for them, and the barrel has shaken us 
up to them. 

Today you and I want things beyond our 
reach. 0, how we want them! But a cruel 
fate will not let us have them. 

Do you not see that "cruel fate" is our own 
smallness and unreadiness? As we grow 
greater we have greater things. We have today 
all we can stand today. More would wreck us. 
More would start us to rattling. 

Getting up is growing up. 

And this blessed old barrel of life is just 
waiting and anxious to shake everybody up as 
fast as everybody grows. 



46 



Going Up 

How We Become Great 

WE go up as we grow great. That is, we 
go up as we grow up. But so many 
are trying to grow great on the out- 
side without growing great on the inside. They 
rattle on the inside! 

They fool themselves, but nobody else. 

There is only one greatness — inside great- 
ness. All outside greatness is merely an in- 
cidental reflection of the inside. 

Greatness is not measured in any material 
terms. It is not measured in inches, dollars, 
acres, votes, hurrahs, or by any other of the 
world's yardsticks or barometers. 

Greatness is measured in spiritual terms. 
It is education. It is life expansion. 

We go up from selfishness to unselfishness. 

We go up from impurity to purity. 

We go up from unhappiness to happiness. 

We go up from weakness to strength. 

We go up from low ideals to high ideals. 

We go up from little vision to greater vision. 

We go up from foolishness to wisdom. 

We go up from fear to faith. 

We go up from ignorance to understanding. 

We go up by our own personal efforts. We 

47 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

go up by our own service, sacrifice, struggle 
and overcoming. We push out our own sky- 
line. We rise above our own obstacles. We 
learn to see, hear, hold and understand. 

We may become very great, very educated, 
rise very high, and yet not leave our kitchen 
or blacksmith shop. We take the kitchen or 
blacksmith shop right up with us ! We make 
it a great kitchen or great blacksmith shop. 
It becomes our throne-room! 

Come, let us grow greater. There is a throne 
for each of us. 



"Getting to the Top" 

"Getting to the top" is the world's pet delu- 
sion. There is no top. No matter how high 
we rise, we discover infinite distances above. 
The higher we rise, the better we see that life 
on this planet is the going up from the Finite 
to the Infinite. 

The world says that to get greatness means 
to get great things. So the world is in the 
business of getting — getting great fortunes, 
great lands, great titles, great applause, great 
fame, and folderol. Afterwhile the poor old 
world hears the empty rattle of the inside, and 
wails, "All is vanity. I find no pleasure in 
them. Life is a failure." All outside life is a 
failure. Real life is in being things on the 
inside, not in getting things on the outside. 

48 



GOING UP 

I weary of the world's pink-sheet extras 
about "Getting to the Top" and "Forging to 
the Front." Too often they are the sordid 
story of a few scrambling over the heads of 
the weaker ones. Sometimes they are the 
story of one pig crowding the other pigs out of 
the trough and cornering all the swill ! 



The Secret of Greatness 

Christ Jesus was a great Teacher. His mis- 
sion was to educate humanity. 

There came to him those two disciples who 
wanted to "get to the top." Those two sons of 
Zebedee wanted to have the greatest places in 
the new kingdom they imagined he would es- 
tablish on earth. 

They got very busy pursuing greatness, 
but I do not read that they were half so busy 
preparing for greatness. They even had their 
mother out electioneering for them. 

"0, Master," said the mother, "grant that 
these my two sons may sit, the one on thy 
right hand, and the other on the left, in thy 
kingdom." 

The Master looked with love and pity upon 
their unpreparedness. "Are ye able to drink 
of the cup?" Then he gave the only definition 
of greatness that can ever- stand: "Whosoever 
will be great among you, let him be your min- 

49 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

ister; and whosoever will be chief among you, 
let him be your servant." 

That is we cannot be "born great," nor "have 
greatness thrust upon" us. We must "achieve 
greatness" by developing it on the inside — 
developing ability to minister and to serve. 

We cannot buy a great arm. Our arm must 
become a great servant, and thus it becomes 
great. 

We cannot buy a great mind. Our mind 
must become a great servant, and thus it be- 
comes great. 

We cannot buy a great character. It is 
earned in great moral service. 



The First Step at Hand 

This is the Big Business of life — going up, 
getting educated, getting greatness on the in- 
side. Getting greatness on the outside is lit- 
tle business. Much of it mighty little. 

Everybody's privilege and duty is to become 
great. And the joy of it is that the first step 
is always nearest at hand. We do not have to 
go off to New York or Chicago or go chasing 
around the world to become great. It is a 
great stairway that leads from where our feet 
are now upward for an infinite number of steps. 

We must take the first step now. Most of 
us want to take the hundredth step or the 

50 



GOING UP 

thousandth step now. We want to make some 
spectacular stride of a thousand steps at one 
leap. That is why we fall so hard when we 
miss our step. 

We must go right back to our old place — 
into our kitchen or our workshop or our office 
and take the first step, solve the problem near- 
est at hand. We must make our old work 
luminous with a new devotion. We must bat- 
tle up over every inch. And as fast as we 
solve and dissolve the difficulties and turn our 
burdens into blessings, we find love, the uni- 
versal solvent, shining out of our lives. We 
find our spiritual influences going upward. So 
the winds of earth are born ; they rush in from 
the cold lands to the warm upward currents. 
And so as our problems disappear and our life 
currents set upward, the world is drawn to- 
ward us with its problems. We find our kitch- 
en or workshop or office becoming a new throne 
of power. We find the world around us rising 
up to call us blessed. 

As we grow greater our troubles grow smal- 
ler, for we see them thru greater eyes. We 
rise above them. 

As we grow greater our opportunities grow 
greater. That is, we begin to see them. They 
are around us all the time, but we must get 
greater eyes to see them. 

Generally speaking, the smaller our vision of 

51 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

our work, the more we admire what we have 
accomplished and "point with pride." The 
greater our vision, the more we see what is 
yet to be accomplished. 

It was the sweet girl graduate who at com- 
mencement wondered how one small head 
could contain it all. It was Newton after giv- 
ing the world a new science who looked back 
over it and said, "I seem to have been only a 
boy playing on the seashore * * * while 
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered 
before me." That great ocean is before us 
all. 

The Widow's Mites 

The great Teacher pointed to the widow who 
cast her two mites into the treasury, and then 
to the rich men who had cast in much more. 
"This poor widow hath cast in more than they 
all. For all these have of their abundance cast 
in unto the offerings of God: but she of her 
penury hath cast in all the living that she had." 

Tho the rich men had cast in more, yet it 
was only a part of their possessions. The 
widow cast in less, but it was all she had. The 
Master cared little what the footings of the 
money were in the treasury. That is not why 
we give. We give to become great. The 
widow had given all — had completely over- 
come her selfishness and fear of want. 

52 



GOING UP 

Becoming great is overcoming our selfish- 
ness and fear. He that saveth his life shall 
lose it, but he that loseth his life for the ad- 
vancement of the kingdom of happiness on 
earth shall find it great and glorified. 

Our greatness therefore does not depend 
upon how much we give or upon what we do, 
whether peeling potatoes or ruling a nation, 
but upon the percentage of our output to our 
resources. Upon doing with our might what 
our hands find to do. Quit worrying about what 
you cannot get to do. Rejoice in doing the 
things you can get to do. And as you are 
faithful over a few things you go up to be 
ruler over many. 

The world says some of us have golden gifts 
and some have copper gifts. But when we 
cast them all into the treasury of right serv- 
ice, there is an alchemy that transmutes every 
gift into gold. Every work is drudgery when 
done selfishly. Every work becomes golden 
when done in a golden manner. 



Finding the Great People 

I do not know who fitted the boards into the 
floor I stand upon. I do not know all the great 
people who may come and stand upon this 
floor. But I do know that the one who made 
the floor — and the one who sweeps it — is 
just as great as anybody in the world who may 

53 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

come and stand upon it, if each be doing his 
work with the same love, faithfulness and 
capability. 

We have to look farther than the "Who's 
Who" and Dun and Bradstreet to make a 
roster of the great people of a community. 
You will find the community heart in the pre- 
cious handful who believe that the service of 
God is the service of man. 

The great people of the community serve 
and sacrifice for a better tomorrow. They are 
the faithful few who get behind the churches, 
the schools, the lyceum and chautauqua, and 
all the other movements that go upward. 

They are the ones who are "always trying to 
run things." They are the happy ones, happy 
for the larger vision that comes as they go 
higher by unselfish service. They are discov- 
ering that their sweetest pay comes from do- 
ing many things they are not paid for. They 
rarely get thanked, for the community does 
not often think of thanking them until it comes 
time to draft the "resolutions of respect." 

I had to go to the mouth of a coal-mine in 
a little Illinois town, to find the man the bureau 
had given as lyceum committeeman there. I 
wondered what the grimy-faced man from the 
shaft, wearing the miner's lamp in his cap, 
could possibly have to do with the lyceum 
course. But I learned that he had all to do 
with it. He had sold the tickets and had done 

54 



GOING UP 

all the managing. He was superintendent of 
the Sunday school. He was the storm-center 
of every altruistic effort in the town — the 
greatest man there, because the most service- 
able, tho he worked every day full time with 
his pick at his bread-and-butter job. 

The great people are so busy serving that 
they have little time to strut and pose in the 
show places. Few of them are * 'prominent 
clubmen." You rarely find their names in the 
society page. They rarely give "brilliant so- 
cial functions." Their idle families attend to 
such things. 

A Glimpse of Gunsaulus 

I found a great man lecturing at the chau- 
tauquas. He preaches in Chicago on Sundays 
to thousands. He writes books and runs a 
college he founded by his own preaching. He 
is the mainspring of so many uplift movements 
that his name gets into the papers about every 
day, and you read it in almost every commit- 
tee doing good things in Chicago. 

He had broken away from Chicago to have 
a vacation. Many people think that a vaca- 
tion means going off somewhere and stretching 
out under trees or letting the mind become a 
blank. But this Chicago preacher went from 
one chautauqua town to another, and took his 
vacation going up and down the streets. He 

55 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

dug into the local history of each place, and 
before dinner he knew more about the place 
than most of the natives. 

"There is a sermon for me," he would ex- 
claim every half -hour. He went to see people 
who were doing things. He went to see people 
who were doing nothing. In every town he 
would discover somebody of unusual attain- 
ment. He made every town an unusual town. 
He turned the humdrum travel map into a won- 
derland. He scolded lazy towns and praised 
enterprising ones. He stopped young fellows 
on the streets. "What are you going to do in 
life?" Perhaps the young man would say, "I 
have no chance." "You come to Chicago and 
I'll give you a chance," the man on his vacation 
would reply. 

So this Chicago preacher was busy every 
day, working overtime on his vacation. He 
was busy about other people's business. He 
did not once ask the price of land, nor where 
there was a good investment for himself, but 
every day he was trying to make an investment 
in somebody else. 

His friends would sometimes worry about 
him. They would say, "Why doesn't the doc- 
tor take care of himself, instead of taking care 
of everybody else? He wears himself out for 
other people until he hasn't strength enough 
left to lecture and do his own work." 

Sometimes they were right about that. 
56 



GOING UP 

But he that saveth his life shall lose it, and 
he that loseth his life in loving service finds it 
returning to him great and glorious. This 
man's preaching did not make him great. His 
college did not make him great. His books did 
not make him great. These are the by-prod- 
ucts. His life of service for others makes him 
great — makes his preaching, his college and 
his books great. 

This Chicago man gives his life into the 
service of humanity, and it becomes the fuel 
to make the steam to accomplish the wonder- 
ful things he does. Let him stop and "take 
care of himself," and his career would stop. 

If he had begun life by "taking care of 
himself" and "looking out for number one," 
stipulating in advance every cent he was to get 
and writing it all down in the contract, most 
likely Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus would have re- 
mained a struggling, discouraged preacher in 
the backwoods of Morrow county, Ohio. 

Give It Now 

Gunsaulus often says, "You are planning and 
saving and telling yourself that afterwhile you 
are going to give great things and do great 
things. Give it now! Give your dollar now, 
rather than your thousands afterwhile. You 
need to give it now, and the world needs to 
get it now." 

57 



VI 

The Problem of "Preparedness" 
Preparing Children to Live 

THE problem of "preparedness" is the 
problem of preparing children for life. 
All other kinds of "preparedness" fade 
into insignificance before this. The history of 
nations shows that their strength was not in 
the size of their armies and in the vastness of 
their population and wealth, but in the strength 
and ideals of the individual citizens. 

As long as the nation was young and grow- 
ing — as long as the people were struggling 
and overcoming — that nation was strong. It 
was "prepared." 

But when the struggle stopped, the strength 
waned, for the strength came from the strug- 
gle. When the people became materially pros- 
perous and surrendered to ease and indulgence, 
they became fat, stallfed weaklings. Then 
they fell a prey to younger, hardier peoples. 

Has the American nation reached that pe- 
riod? 

Many homes and communities have reached 
it. 

All over America are fathers and mothers 
who have struggled and have become strong 
men and women thru their struggles, who are 
saying, "Our children shall have better chances 

58 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

than we had. We are living for our children. 
We are going to give them the best education 
our money can buy." 

Then, forgetful of how they became strong, 
they plan to take away from their children 
their birthright — their opportunity to become 
strong and "prepared" — thru struggle and 
service and overcoming. 

Most "advantages" are disadvantages. Giv- 
ing a child a chance generally means getting 
out of his way. Many an orphan can be 
grateful that he was jolted from his life-pre- 
server and cruelly forced to sink or swim. 
Thus he learned to swim. 

"We are going to give our children the best 
education our money can buy." 

They think they can buy an education — buy 
wisdom, strength and understanding, and give 
it to them C. 0. D. ! They seem to think they 
will buy any brand they see — buy the home 
brand of education, or else send off to New 
York or Paris or to "Sears Roebuck," and get 
a bucketful or a tankful of education. If they 
are rich enough, maybe they will have a pri- 
vate pipe-line of education laid to their home. 
They are going to force this education into 
them regularly until they get them full of edu- 
cation. They are going to get them fully in- 
flated with education! 

Toll the bell ! There's going to be a "blow 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

out." Those inflated children are going to 
have to run on "flat tires." 

Father and mother cannot buy their children 
education. All they can do is to buy them 
some tools, perhaps, and open the gate and say, 
"Sic 'em, Tige!" The children must get it 
themselves. 

A father and mother might as well say, "We 
will buy our children the strength we have 
earned in our arms and the wisdom we have 
acquired in a life of struggle." As well expect 
the athlete to give them his physical develop- 
ment he has earned in years of exercise. As 
well expect the musician to give them the 
technic he has acquired in years of practice. 
As well expect the scholar to give them the 
ability to think he has developed in years of 
study. As well expect Moses to give them his 
spiritual understanding acquired in a long life 
of prayer. 

They can show the children the way, but 
each child must make the journey. 

Here is a typical case. 



The Story of "Gussie" 

There was a factory town back East. Not 
a pretty town, but just a great, dirty mill and 
a lot of little dirty houses around the mill. The 
hands lived in the little dirty houses and 

60 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

worked six days of the week in the big mill. 

There was a little, old man who went about 
that mill, often saying, "I hain't got no book 
Tarnin* like the rest of you." He was the 
man who owned the mill. He had made it 
with his own genius out of nothing. He had 
become rich and honored. Every man in the 
mill loved him like a father. 

He had an idolatry for a book. 

He also had a little pink son, whose name 
was F. Gustavus Adolphus. The little old 
man often said, "Fin going to give that boy 
the best education my money can buy." 

He began to buy it. He began to polish 
and sandpaper Gussie from the minute the 
child could sit up in the cradle and notice 
things. He sent him to the astrologer, the 
phrenologer and all other "ologers" they had 
around there. When Gussie was old enough to 
export, he sent the boy to one of the greatest 
universities in the land. The fault was not 
with the university, not with Gussie, who was 
bright and capable. 

The fault was with the little old man, who 
was so wise and great about everything else, 
and so foolish about his own boy. In the 
blindness of his love he robbed his boy of his 
birthright. 

The birthright of every child is the oppor- 
tunity of becoming great — of going up — of 
getting educated. 

61 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

Gussie had no chance to serve. Everything 
was handed to him on a silver platter. Gussie 
went thru that university about like a steer 
from Texas goes thru Mr. Armour's institute 
of packnology in Chicago. Did you ever go 
over into Packingtown and see a steer receive 
his education? 

You remember, then, that after he matric- 
ulates — after he gets the grand bump, said 
steer does not have to do another thing. His 
education is all arranged for in advance and 
he merely rides thru and receives it. There is 
a row of professors with their sleeves rolled 
up who give him the degrees. So as Mr. T. 
Steer of Panhandle goes riding thru on that 
endless cable from his A-B-C's to his eternal 
cold storage, each professor hits him a dab. 
He rides along from department to department 
until he is canned. 

They "canned" Gussie. He had a man hired 
to study for him. He rode from department 
to department. They upholstered him, enam- 
eled him, manicured him, sugar-cured him, 
embalmed him. Finally Gussie was done and 
the paint was dry. He was a thing of beauty. 

9p rr »P 

Gussie and Bill Whackem 

Gussie came back home with his education 
in the baggage-car. It was checked. The mill 
shut down on a week day, the first time in its 

62 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

history. The hands marched down to the de- 
pot, and when the young lord alighted, the fac- 
tory band played, "See, the Conquering Hero 
Comes." 

A few years later the mill shut down again 
on a week day. There was crape hanging on 
the office door. Men and women stood weeping 
in the streets. The little old man had been 
translated. - 

When they next opened up the mill, F. Gus- 
tavus Adolphus was at its head. He had in- 
herited the entire plant. "F. Gustavus Adol- 
phus, President." 

Poor little peanut! He rattled. He had 
never grown great enough to fill so great a 
place. In two years and seven months the 
mill was a wreck. The monument of a fath- 
er's lifetime was wrecked in two years and 
seven months by the boy who had all the "ad- 
vantages." 

So the mill was shut down the third time on 
a week day. It looked as tho it never could 
open. But it did open, and when it opened it 
had a new kind of boss. If I were to give the 
new boss a descriptive name, I would call him 
"Bill Whackem." He was an orphan. He 
had little chance. He had a new black eye 
almost every day. But he seemed to fatten 
on bumps. Every time he was bumped he 
would swell up. How fast he grew! He be- 
came the most useful man in the community. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

People forgot all about Bill's lowly origin. 
They got to looking up to him to start and 
run things. 

So when the courts were looking for some- 
body big enough to take charge of the wrecked 
mill, they simply had to appoint Hon. William 
Whackem. It was Hon. William Whackem 
who put the wreckage together and made the 
wheels go round, and finally got the hungry 
town back to work. 



Colleges Give Us Tools 

After that a good many people said it was 
the college that made a fool of Gussie. They 
said Bill succeeded so well because he never 
went to one of "them highbrow schools." I 
am sorry to say I thought that way for a good 
while. 

But now I see that Bill went up in spite of 
his handicaps. If he had had Gussie's fine 
equipment he might have accomplished vastly 
more. 

The book and the college suffer at the hands* 
of their friends. They say to the book and 
the college, "Give us an education." They 
cannot do that. You cannot get an education 
from the book and the college any more than 
you can get to New York by reading a travel- 
ers' guide. You cannot get physical educa- 
tion by reading a book on gymnastics. 

64 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

The book and the college show you the way, 
give you instruction and furnish you finer 
working tools. But the real education is the 
journey you make, the strength you develop, 
the service you perform with these instru- 
ments and tools. 

Gussie was in the position of a man with a 
very fine equipment of tools and no experience 
in using them. Bill was the man with the 
poor, homemade, crude tools, but with the en- 
ergy, vision and strength developed by strug- 
gle. 

The "Hard Knocks Graduates" 

For education is getting wisdom, under- 
standing, strength, greatness, physically, men- 
tally and morally. I believe I know some peo- 
ple liberally educated who cannot write their 
own names. But they have served and over- 
come and developed great lives with the poor, 
crude tools at their command. 

In almost every community are what we 
sometimes call "hard knocks graduates" — 
people who have never been to college nor 
have studied many or any books. Yet they 
are educated to the degree they have acquired 
these elements of greatness in their lives. 

They realized how they have been handi- 
capped by their poor mental tools. That is 
why they say, "All my life I have been handi- 

65 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

capped by lack of proper preparation. Don't 
make my mistake, children, go to school." 

The young person with electrical genius will 
make an electrical machine from a few bits of 
junk. But send him to Westinghouse and see 
how much more he will achieve with the same 
genius and with finer equipment. 

Get the best tools you can. But remember 
diplomas, degrees are not an education, they 
are merely preparations. When you are thru 
with the books, remember, you are having a 
commencement, not an end-ment. You will 
discover with the passing years that life is 
just one series of greater commencements. 

Go out with your fine equipment from your 
commencements into the school of service and 
write your education in the only book you ever 
can know — the book of your experience. 
That is what you know — what the courts will 
take as evidence when they put you upon the 
witness stand. 



The Tragedy of Unpreparedness 

The story of Gussie and Bill Whackem is 
being written in every community in tears, 
failure and heartache. It is peculiarly a trag- 
edy of our American civilization today. 

These fathers and mothers who toil and 
save, who get great farms, fine homes and 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

large bank accounts, so often think they can 
give greatness to their children — they can 
make great places for them in life and put 
them into them. 

They do all this and the children rattle. 
They have had no chance to grow great enough 
for the places. The child gets the blame for 
making the wreck, even as Gussie was blamed 
for wrecking his father's plant, when the child 
is the victim. 

A man heard me telling the story of Gussie 
and Bill Whackem, and he went out of my 
audience very indignant. He said he was very 
glad his boy was not there to hear it. But 
that good, deluded father now has his head 
bowed in shame over the career of his spoiled 
son. 

I rarely tell of it on a platform that at the 
close of the lecture somebody does not take 
me aside and tell me a story just as sad from 
that community. 

For years poor Harry Thaw was front-paged 
on the newspapers and gibbeted in the pulpits 
as the shocking example of youthful deprav- 
ity. He seems never to have had a fighting 
chance to become a man. He seems to have 
been robbed of his birthright from the cradle. 
Yet the father of this boy who has cost Amer- 
ica millions in court and detention expenses 
was one of the greatest business generals of 
the Keystone state. He could plat great coal 

67 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

empires and command armies of men, but he 
seems to have been pitifully ignorant of the 
fact that the barrel shakes. 

It is the educated, the rich and the worldly 
wise who blunder most in the training of their 
children. Poverty is a better trainer for the 
rest. 

The menace of America lies not in the swol- 
len fortunes, but in the shrunken souls who 
inherit them. 

But Nature's eliminating process is kind to 
the race in the barrel shaking down the rat- 
tlers. Somebody said it is only three genera- 
tions from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves. 

How long this nation will endure depends 
upon how many Gussie boys this nation pro- 
duces. Steam heat is a fine thing, but do you 
notice how few of our strong men get their 
start with steam heat? 



Children, Learn This Early 

You boys and girls, God bless you! You 
live in good homes. Father and mother love 
you and give you everything you need. You 
get to thinking, "I won't have to turn my hand 
over. Papa and mamma will take care of me, 
and when they are gone I'll inherit everything 
they have. I'm fixed for life." 

No, you are unfixed. You are a candidate 
for trouble. You are going to rattle. Father 

68 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

and mother can be great and you can be a 
peanut. 

You must solve your own problems and carry 
your own loads to have a strong mind and 
back. Anybody who does for you regularly 
what you can do for yourself — anybody who 
gives you regularly what you can earn for 
yourself, is robbing you of your birthright. 

Father and mother can put money in your 
pocket, ideas in your head and food in your 
stomach, but you cannot own it save as you 
digest it — put it into your life. 

I have read somewhere about a man who 
found a cocoon and put it in his house where 
he could watch it develop. One day he saw a 
little insect struggling inside the cocoon. It 
was trying to get out of the envelope. It 
seemed in trouble and needed help. He 
opened the envelope with a knife and set the 
struggling insect free. But out came a mon- 
strosity that soon died. It had an over-de- 
veloped body and under-developed wings. He 
learned that helping the insect was killing it. 
He took away from it the very thing it had to 
have — the struggle. For it was this struggle 
of breaking its own way out of that envelope 
that was needed to reduce its body and de- 
velop its wings. 

V *F V 



69 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

Not Packhorse Work 

But remember there is little virtue in work 
unless it is getting us somewhere. Just work 
that gets us three meals a day and a place to 
lie down to sleep, then another day of the same 
grind, then a year of it and years following 
until our machine is worn out and on the junk- 
pile, means little. "One day nearer home" for 
such a worker means one day nearer the scrap- 
heap. 

Such a worker is like the packhorse who goes 
forward to keep ahead of the whip. Such a 
worker is the horse we used to have hitched 
to the sorghum mill. Round and round that 
horse went, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, 
his head down, without ambition enough to 
prick up his ears. Such work deadens and 
stupefies. The masses work about that way. 
They regard work as a necessary evil. They 
are right — such work is a necessary evil, and 
they make it such. They follow their nose. 
"Dumb, driven cattle." 

But getting a vision of life, and working to 
grow upward to it, that is the work that brings 
the joy and the greatness. 

When we are growing and letting our facul- 
ties develop, we will love even the packhorse 
job, because it is our "meal ticket" that enables 
us to travel upward. 

70 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

"Helping" the Turkeys 

One time I put some turkey eggs under the 
mother hen and waited day by day for them 
to hatch. And sure enough, one day the eggs 
began to crack and the little turkeys began to 
stick their heads out of the shells. Some of 
the little turkeys came out from the shells all 
right, but some of them stuck in the shells. 

"Shell out, little turkeys, shell out," I urged, 
"for Thanksgiving is coming. Shell out !" 

But they stuck to the shells. 

"Little turkeys, I'll have to help you. I'll 
have to shell you by hand." So I picked the 
shells off. "Little turkeys, you will never know 
how fortunate you are. Ordinary turkeys do 
not have these advantages. Ordinary turkeys 
do not get shelled by hand." 

Did I help them? I killed them, or stunted 
them. Not one of the turkeys was "right" 
that I helped. They were runts. One of them 
was a regular Harry Thaw turkey. They had 
too many silk socks. Too many "advantages." 

Children, you must crack your own shells. 
You must overcome your own obstacles to de- 
velop your own powers. 

A rich boy can succeed, but he has a poorer 
chance than a poor boy. The cards are against 
him. He must succeed in spite of his "ad- 
vantages." 

I am pleading for you to get a great arm, a 
great mind, a great character, for the joy of 

71 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

having a larger life. I am pleading with you 
to know the joy of overcoming and having the 
angels come and minister to you. 



Happiness in Our Work 

Children, I am pleading with you to find 
happiness. All the world is seeking happiness, 
but so many are seeking it by rattling down 
instead of by shaking up. 

The happiness is in going up — in developing 
a greater arm, a greater mind, a greater char- 
acter. 

Happiness is the joy of overcoming. It is 
the delight of an expanding consciousness. It 
is the cry of the eagle mounting upward. It 
is the proof that we are progressing. 

We find happiness in our work, not outside 
of our work. If we cannot find happiness in 
our work, we have the wrong job. Find the 
work that fits your talents, and stop watching 
the clock and planning vacations. 

Loving friends used to warn me against 
"breaking down." They scared me into "tak- 
ing care" of myself. And I got to taking such 
good care of myself and watching for symp- 
toms that I became a physical wreck. 

I saved myself by getting busier. I plunged 
into work I love. I found my job in my work, 
not away from it, and the work refreshed me 

72 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

and rejuvenated me. Now I do two men's 
work, and have grown from a skinny, fretful, 
nervous wreck into a hearty, happy man. This 
has been a great surprise to my friends and a 
great disappointment to the undertaker. I am 
an editor in the daytime and a lecturer at night. 

I edit all day and take a vacation lecturing at 
night. I lecture almost every day of the year 
— maybe two or three times some days — and 
then take a vacation by editing and writing. 
Thus every day is jam full of play and vacation 
and good times. The year is one round of joy, 
and I ought to pay people for the privilege of 
speaking and writing to them instead of them 
paying me! 

If I did not like my work, of course, I would 
be carrying a terrible burden and would 
speedily collapse. 

You see, I have no time nowadays to break 
down. I have no time to think and grunt and 
worry about my body. And like Paul I am 
happy to be "absent from the body and present 
with the Lord." Thus this old body behaves 
just beautifully and wags along like the tail 
follows the dog when I forget all about it. The 
grunter lets the tail wag the dog. 



I have never known a case of genuine "over- 
work." I have never known of anyone killing 

73 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

himself by working. But I have known of mul- 
titudes killing themselves by taking vacations. 

The people who think they are overworking 
are merely overworrying. This is one species 
of selfishness. 

To worry is to doubt God. 

To work at the things you love, or for those 
you love, is to turn work into play and duty 
into privilege. 

When we love our work, it is not work, it is 
life. 

*SP *F V 

Many Kinds of Drunkards 

The world is trying to find happiness in 
being amused. The world is amusement-mad. 
Vacations, Coca Cola and moviemania! 

What a sad, empty lot of rattlers! Look 
over the bills of the movies, look over the news- 
stands and see a picture of the popular mind, 
for these places keep just what the people want 
to buy. What a lot of mental frog-pond and 
moral slum our boys and girls wade thru! 

There are ten literary drunkards to one 
alcoholic drunkard. There are a hundred 
amusement drunkards to one victim of strong 
drink. And all just as hard to cure. 

We have to have amusement, but if we fill 
our lives with nothing but amusement, we 
never grow. We go thru our lives babies with 
new rattleboxes and "sugar-tits." 

74 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

Almost every day as I go along the street 
to some hall to lecture, I hear somebody ask- 
ing, "What are they going to have in the hall 
tonight?" 

"Going to have a lecture." 

"Lecture?" said with a shiver as tho it was 
"small pox." "I ain't goin\ I don't like lec- 
tures." 

The speaker is perfectly honest. He has no 
place to put a lecture. I am not saying that he 
should attend my lecture, but I am grieving at 
what underlies his remark. He does not want 
to think. He wants to follow his nose around. 
Other people generally lead his nose. The man 
who will not make the effort to think is the 
great menace to the nation. The crowd that 
drifts and lives for amusement is the crowd 
that finds itself back near the caboose, and as 
the train of progress leaves them, they wail, 
they "never had no chanct." They want to 
start a new party to reform the government. 



The Lure of the City 
Do you ever get lonely in a city? How few 
men and women there. A jam of people, most 
of them imitations — most of them trying to look 
like they get more salary. Poor, hungry, doped 
butterflies of the bright lights, — hopers, suck- 
ers and straphangers! Down the great white 
way they go chasing amusement to find hap- 

75 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

piness. They must be amused every moment, 
even when they eat, or they will have to be 
alone with their empty lives. 

The Prodigal Son came to himself after- 
while and thought upon his ways. Then he 
arose and went to his fathers house. When- 
ever one will stop chasing amusements long 
enough to think upon his ways, he will arise 
and go to his father's house of wisdom. But 
there is no hope for the person who will not 
stop and think. And the devil works day and 
night shifts keeping the crowd moving on. 

That is why the crowd is not furnishing the 
strong men and women. 

We must have amusement and relaxation. 
Study your muscles. First they contract, then 
they relax. But the muscle that goes on con- 
tinually relaxing is degenerating. And the in- 
dividual, the community, the nation that goes 
on relaxing without contracting — without 
struggling and overcoming — is degenerating. 

The more you study your muscles, the more 
you learn that while one muscle is relaxing 
another is contracting. So you must learn that 
your real relaxation, vacation and amusement, 
are merely changing over to contracting an- 
other set of muscles. 

Go to the bank president's office, go to the 
railroad magnate's office, go to the great pulpit, 
to the college chair — go to any place of great 

76 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

responsibility in a city and ask the one who 
fills the place, "Were you born in this city?" 

The reply is almost a monotony. "I born in 
this city? No, I was born in Posey ville, In- 
diana, and I came to this city forty years ago 
and went to work at the bottom." 

He glows as he tells you of some log-cabin 
home, hillside or farmside where he struggled 
as a boy. Personally, I think this log-cabin 
ancestry has been over-confessed for campaign 
purposes. Give us steam heat and push-but- 
tons. There is no virtue in a log-cabin, save 
that there the necessity for struggle that brings 
strength is most in evidence. There the young 
person gets the struggle and service that makes 
for strength and greatness. And as that young 
person comes to the city and shakes in the bar- 
rel among the weaklings of the artificial life, 
he rises above them like the eagle soars above 
a lot of chattering sparrows. 

The cities do not make their own steam. The 
little minority from the farms controls the ma- 
jority. The red blood of redemption flows from 
the country year by year into the national ar- 
teries, else these cities would drop off the map. 

If it were not for Poseyville, Indiana, Chi- 
cago would disappear. If it were not for 
Poseyville, New York would disintegrate for 
lack of leaders. 

77 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

"Hep" and "Pep" for the Home Town 

But so many of the home towns of 
America are sick. Many are dying. Many are 
dead. 

It is the lure of the city — and the lure-less- 
ness of the country. The town the young peo- 
ple leave is the town the young people ought 
to leave. Somebody says, "The reason so many 
young people go to hell is because they have no 
other place to go." 

What is the matter with the small town ? Do 
not blame it all upon the city mail order house. 
With rural delivery, daily papers, telephones, 
centralized schools, automobiles and good 
roads, there are no more delightful places in 
the world to live than in the country or in the 
small town. They have the city advantages 
plus sunshine, air and freedom that the crowded 
cities cannot have. 

I asked the keeper who was showing me 
thru the insane asylum at Weston, West Vir- 
ginia, "You say you have nearly two thousand 
insane people in this institution and only a 
score of guards to keep them in. Aren't you 
in danger? What is to hinder these insane 
people from getting together, organizing, over- 
powering the few guards and breaking out?" 
The keeper was not in the least alarmed at 
the question. He smiled. "Many people say 
that. But they don't understand. If these peo- 
ple could get together they wouldn't be in this 

78 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

asylum. They are insane. No two of them can 
agree upon how to get together and how to 
break out. So a few of us can hold them." 

It would be almost unkind to carry this fur- 
ther, but I have been thinking ever since that 
about three-fourths of the small towns of 
America have one thing in common with the 
asylum folks — they can't get together. They 
cannot organize for the public good. They 
break up into little antagonistic social, busi- 
ness and even religious factions and neutralize 
each other's efforts. 

A lot of struggling churches compete with 
each other instead of massing for the common 
good. And when the churches fight, the devil 
stays neutral and furnishes the munitions for 
both sides. 

So the home towns stagnate and the young 
people with visions go away to the cities where 
opportunity seems to beckon. Ninety-nine out 
of a hundred of them will jostle with the strap- 
hangers all their lives, mere wheels turning 
round in a huge machine. Ninety-nine out of 
a hundred of them might have had a larger op- 
portunity right back in the home town, had the 
town been awake and united and inviting. 

We must make the home town the brightest, 
most attractive, most promising place for the 
young people. No home town can afford to 
spend its years raising crops of young people 
for the cities. That is the worst kind of soil 

79 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

impoverishment — all going out and nothing 
coming back. That is the drain that devitalizes 
the home towns more than all the city mail or- 
der houses. 

America is to be great, not in the greatness 
of a few crowded cities, but in the greatness 
of innumerable home towns. 

The slogan today should be, For God and 
Home and the Home Town ! 



A School of Struggle 

Dr. Henry Solomon Lehr, founder of the 
Ohio Northern University at Ada, Ohio, one of 
Ohio's greatest educators, used to say with 
pride, "Our students come to school; they are 
not sent." 

He encouraged his students to be self-sup- 
porting, and most of them were working their 
way thru school. He made the school calendar 
and courses elastic to accommodate them. He 
saw the need of combining the school of books 
with the school of struggle. He organized his 
school into competing groups, so that the stu- 
dent who had no struggle in his life would at 
least have to struggle with the others during 
his schooling. 

He pitted class against class. He organized 
great literary and debating societies to compete 
with each other. He arranged contests for the 
military department. His school was one sur- 

80 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

ging mass of contestants. Yet each student felt 
no compulsion. Rather he felt that he was in- 
itiating an individual or class effort to win. The 
literary societies vied with each other in their 
programs and in getting new members, going 
every term to unbelievable efforts to win over 
the others. They would go miles out on the 
trains to intercept new students, even to their 
homes in other states. Each old student 
pledged new students in his home country. The 
military companies turned the school into a 
military camp for weeks each year, scarcely 
sleeping while drilling for a contest flag. 

Those students went out into the world 
trained to struggle. I do not believe there is 
a school in America with a greater alumni roll 
of men and women of uniformly greater 
achievement. 

I believe the most useful schools today are 
schools of struggle — schools offering encourage- 
ment and facilities for young people to work 
their way thru and to act upon their own in- 
itiative. 



Men Needed More Than Millions 

We are trying a new educational experiment 
today. 

The old "deestrick" school is passing, and 
with it the small academies and colleges, each 
with its handful of students around a teacher, 

81 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

as in the old days of the lyceum in Athens, when 
the pupils sat around the philosopher in the 
groves. 

From these schools came the makers and the 
preservers of the nation. 

Today we are building wonderful public 
schools with equally wonderful equipment. To- 
day we are replacing the many small colleges 
with a few great centralized state normal 
schools and state universities. We are spend- 
ing millions upon them in laboratories, equip- 
ment and maintenance. Today we scour the 
earth for specialists to sit in the chairs and 
speak the last word in every department of 
human research. 

O, how the students of the "dark ages" would 
have rejoiced to see this day! Many of them 
never saw a germ ! 

But each student has the same definite effort 
to make in assimilation today as then. Know- 
ing and growing demand the same personal 
struggle in the cushions of the "frat" house as 
back on the old oak-slab bench with its splin- 
tered side up. 

I am anxiously awaiting the results. I am 
hoping that the boys and girls who come out 
in case-lots from these huge school plants will 
not be rows of lithographed cans on the shelves 
of life. I am hoping they will not be shorn of 
their individuality, but will have it stimulated 
and unfettered. I am anxious that they be not 

82 



THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS" 

veneered but inspired, not denatured but dis- 
covered. 

All this school machinery is only machinery. 
Back of it must be men — great men. I am 
anxious that the modern school have the mod- 
ern equipment demanded to serve the present 
age. But I am more anxious that each student 
come in vital touch with great men. We get 
life from life, not from laboratories, and we 
have life more abundantly as our lives touch 
greater lives. 

A school is vastly more than machinery, 
methods, microscopes and millions. 

Many a small school struggling to live thinks 
that all it needs is endowment, when the fact 
is that its struggle for existence and the spirit 
of its teachers are its greatest endowment. And 
sometimes when the money endowment comes 
the spiritual endowment goes in fatty degenera- 
tion. Some schools seem to have been visited 
by calamities in the financial prosperity that 
has engulfed them. 

Can we keep men before millions, and keep 
our ideals untainted by foundations? That is 
the question the age is asking. 

You and I are very much interested in the 
answer. 



83 



VII 

The Salvation of a "Sucker" 

The Fiddle and the Tuning 

HOW long it takes to learn things! I 
think I was thirty-four years learning 
one sentence, "You can't get something 
for nothing." I have not yet learned it. Every 
few days I stumble over it somewhere. 

For that sentence utters one of the funda- 
mentals of life that underlies every field of 
activity. 

What is knowing? 

One day a manufacturer took me thru his 
factory where he makes fiddles. Not violins — 
fiddles. 

A violin is only a fiddle with a college edu- 
cation. 

I have had the feeling ever since that you 
and I come into this world like the fiddle comes 
from the factory. We have a body and a neck. 
That is about all there is either to us or to the 
fiddle. We are empty. We have no strings. 
We have no bow — yet! 

When the human fiddles are about six years 
old they go into the primary schools and up 
thru the grammar grades, and get the first 
string — the little E string. The trouble is so 
many of these human fiddles think they are an 

84 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

orchestra right away. They want to quit school 
and go fiddling thru life on this one string! 

We must show these little fiddles they must 
go back into school and go up thru all the de- 
partments and institutions necessary to give 
them the full complement of strings for their 
life symphonies. 

After all this there comes the commencement, 
and the violin comes forth with the E, A, D and 
G strings all in place. Educated now? Why 
is a violin ? To wear strings ? Gussie got that 
far and gave a lot of discord. The violin is 
to give music. 

So there is much yet to do after getting the 
strings. All the book and college can do is to 
give the strings — the tools. After that the vio- 
lin must go into the great tuning school of 
life. Here the pegs are turned and the strings 
are put in tune. The music is the knowing. 
Learning is tuning. 

You do not know what you have memorized, 
you know what you have vitalized, what you 
have written in the book of experience. 

Gussie says, "I have read it in a book." Bill 
Whackem says, " I know!" 



Reading and Knowing 

All of us are Christopher Columbuses, dis- 
covering the same new-old continents of Truth. 
That is the true happiness of life — discovering 

85 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

Truth. We read things in a book and have a 
hazy idea of them. We hear the preacher utter 
truths and we say with little feeling, "Yes, that 
is so." We hear the great truths of life over 
and over and we are not excited. Truth never 
excites — it is falsehood that excites — until we 
discover it in our lives. Until we see it with 
our own eyes. Then there is a thrill. Then 
the old truth becomes a new blessing. Then 
the oldest, driest platitude crystallizes into a 
flashing jewel to delight and enrich our con- 
sciousness. This joy of discovery is the joy of 
living. 

There is such a difference between reading 
a thing and knowing a thing. We could read 
a thousand descriptions of the sun and not 
know the sun as in one glimpse of it with our 
own eyes. 

I used to stand in the row of blessed little 
rascals in the "deestrick" school and read from 
McGuffey's celebrated literature, "If — I — 
p-p-play — with — the — f-f-f-i-i-i-i-r-r-e — I — 
will — g-e-e-et — my-y-y-y-y — f-f-f-f-ingers 
— bur-r-r-rned — period !" 

I did not learn it. I wish I had learned by 
reading it that if I play with the fire I will get 
my fingers burned. I had to slap my hands 
upon hot stoves and coffee-pots, and had to get 
many kinds of blisters in order to learn it. 

Then I had to go around showing the blis- 
ters, boring my friends and taking up a collec- 

86 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

tion of sympathy. "Look at my bad luck!" 
Fool! 

This is not a lecture. It is a confession! It 
seems to me if you in the audience knew how 
little I know, you wouldn't stay. 



"You Can't Get Something for Nothing" 

Yes, I was thirty-four years learning that 
one sentence. "You can't get something for 
nothing." That is, getting it in partial tune. 
It took me so long because I was naturally 
bright. It takes that kind longer than a 
human being. They are so smart you cannot 
teach them with a few bumps. They have to 
be pulverized. 

That sentence takes me back to the days 
when I was a "hired man" on the farm. You 
might not think I had ever been a "hired man" 
on the farm at ten dollars a month and 
"washed, mended and found." You see me 
here on this platform in my graceful and cul- 
tured manner, and you might not believe that 
I had ever trained an orphan calf to drink from 
a copper kettle. But I have fed him the fin- 
gers of this hand many a time. You might 
not think that I had ever driven a yoke of 
oxen and had said the words. But I have! 

I remember the first county fair I ever at- 
tended. Fellow sufferers, you may remember 

87 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

that at the county fair all the people sort out 
to their own departments. Some people go to 
the canned fruit department. Some go to the 
fancywork department. Some go to the swine 
department. Everybody goes to his own de- 
partment. Even the "suckers" ! Did you ever 
notice where they go? That is where I went 
— to the "trimming department." 

I was in the "trimming department" in five 
minutes. Nobody told me where it was. I 
didn't need to be told. I gravitated there. 
The barrel always shakes all of one size to one 
place. You notice that — in a city all of one 
size get together. 

Right at the entrance to the "local Midway" 
I met a gentleman. I know he was a gentle- 
man because he said he was a gentleman. He 
had a little light table he could move quickly. 
Whenever the climate became too sultry he 
would move to greener pastures. On that 
table were three little shells in a row, and there 
was a little pea under the middle shell. I saw 
it there, being naturally bright. I was the only 
naturally bright person around the table, hence 
the only one who knew under which shell the 
little round pea was hidden. 

Even the gentleman running the game was 
fooled. He thought it was under the end shell 
and bet me money it was under the end shell. 
You see, this was not gambling, this was a 
sure thing. (It was!) I had saved up my 

83 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

money for weeks to attend the fair. I bet it 
all on that middle shell. I felt bad. It seemed 
like robbing father. And he seemed like a 
real nice old gentleman, and maybe he had a 
family to keep. But I would teach him a lesson 
not to "monkey" with people like me, naturally 
bright. 

But I needn't have felt bad. I did not rob 
father. Father cleaned me out of all I had in 
about five seconds. 

I went over to the other side of the fair- 
grounds and sat down. That was all I had to 
do now — just go, sit down. I couldn't see the 
mermaid now or get into the grandstand. 

Sadly I thought it all over, but I did not 
get the right answer. I said the thing every 
fool does say when he gets bumped and fails 
to learn the lesson from the bump. I said, 
"Next time I shall be more careful." 

When anybody says that he is due for a re- 
turn date. 

I Bought the Soap 

Learn? No! Within a month I was on the 
street a Saturday night when another gentle- 
man drove into town. He stopped on the pub- 
lic square and stood up in his buggy. "Let 
the prominent citizens gather around me, for 
I am going to give away dollars." 

Immediately all the prominent "suckers" 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

crowded around the buggy. "Gentlemen, I 
am introducing this new medicinal soap that 
cures all diseases humanity is heir to. Now 
just to introduce and advertise, I am putting 
these cakes of Wonder Soap in my hat. You 
see I am wrapping a ten-dollar bill around one 
cake and throwing it into the hat. Now who 
will give me five dollars for the privilege of 
taking a cake of this wonderful soap from my 
hat — any cake you want, gentlemen!" 

And right on top of the pile was the cake 
with the ten wrapped around it! I jumped 
over the rest to shove my five (two weeks' 
farm work) in his hands and grab that bill 
cake. But the bill disappeared. I never 
knew where it went. The man whipped up 
his horse and also disappeared. I never knew 
where he went. 



My "Fool Drawer" 

I grew older and people began to notice that 
I was naturally bright and therefore good 
picking. They began to let me in on the 
ground floor. Did anybody ever let you in on 
the ground floor? I never could stick. When- 
ever anybody let me in on the ground floor it 
seemed like I would always slide on thru and 
land in the cellar. 

I used to have a drawer in my desk I 
called my "fool drawer." I kept my invest- 

90 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

ments in it. I mean, the investments I did 
not have to lock up. You get the pathos of 
that — the investments nobody wanted to 
steal. And whenever I would get unduly in- 
flated I would open that drawer and "view the 
remains." 

I had in that drawer the deed to my Okla- 
homa corner-lots. Those lots were going to 
double next week. But they did not double — I 
doubled. They still exist on the blueprint and 
the Oklahoma metropolis on paper is yet a wide 
place in the road. 

I had in that drawer my deed to my rubber 
plantation. Did you ever hear of a rubber 
plantation in Central America? That was 
mine. I had there my oil propositions. What 
a difference, I have learned, between an oil 
proposition and an oil well ! The learning has 
been very expensive. 

I used to wonder how I ever could spend my 
income. I do not wonder now. I wonder how 
I will make it. 

I had in that drawer my "Everglade" farm. 
Did you ever hear of the "Everglades"? I 
have an aligator ranch there. It is below the 
frost-line, also below the water-line. I will sell 
it by the gallon. 

I had also a bale of mining stock. I had stock 
in gold mines and silver mines. Nobody knows 
how much mining stock I have owned. Nobody 

91 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

could know while I kept that drawer shut. As 
I looked over my gold and silver mine stock, I 
often noticed that it was printed in green. I 
used to wonder why they printed it in green — 
wonder if they wanted it to harmonize with 
me ! And I would realize I had so much to live 
for — the dividends. I have been so near the 
dividends I could smell them. Only one more 
assessment, then we will cut the melon! I 
have heard that all my life and never got a 
piece of the rind. 

Getting "Selected" 

Why go farther? I am not half done con- 
fessing. Each bump only increased my faith 
that the next ship would be mine. Good, hon- 
est, retired ministers would come periodically 
and sell me stock in some new enterprise that 
had millions in it — in its prospectus. I would 
buy because I knew the minister was honest 
and believed in it. He was selling it on his 
reputation. Favorite dodge of the promoter to 
get the ministers to sell his shares. 

I was also greatly interested in companies 
where I put in one dollar and got back a dollar 
or two of bonds and a dollar or two of stock. 
That was doubling and trebling my money over 
night. An old banker once said to me, "Why 
don't you invest in something that will pay you 
five or six per cent, and get it?" 

92 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

I pitied his lack of vision. Bankers were 
such "tightwads." They had no imagination! 
Nothing interested me that did not offer fifty 
or a hundred per cent. — then. Give me the five 
per cent, now! 

By the time I was thirty-four I was a rich 
man in worthless paper. It would have been 
better for me if I had thrown about all my sav- 
ings into the bottom of the sea. 

Then I got a confidential letter from a friend 
of our family I had never met. His name was 
Thomas A. Cleage, and he was in the Rialto 
Building, St. Louis, Missouri. He wrote me in 
extreme confidence, "You have been selected." 

Were you ever selected? If you were, then 
you know the thrill that rent my manly bosom 
as I read that letter from this man who said he 
was a friend of our family. "You have been se- 
lected because you are a prominent citizen and 
have a large influence in your community. You 
are a natural leader and everybody looks up to 
you." 

He knew me! He was the only man who 
did know me. So I took the cork clear under. 

"Because of your tremendous influence you 
have been selected to go in with us in the inner 
circle and get a thousand per cent, dividends." 

Did you get that? I hope you did. I did 
not ! But I took a night train for St. Louis. I 
was afraid somebody might beat me there if 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

I waited til! next day. I sat up all night in a 
day coach to save money for Tom, the friend 
of our family. But I see now I need not have 
hurried so. They would have waited a month 
with the sheep-shears ready. Lambie, lambie, 
lambie, come to St. Louis! 

I don't get any sympathy from this crowd. 
You laugh at me. You respect not my feel- 
ings. I am not going to tell you a thing that 
happened in St. Louis. It is none of your 
business ! 

0, I am so glad I went to St. Louis. Being 
naturally bright, I could not learn it at home, 
back in Ohio. I had to go clear down to St. 
Louis to Tom Cleage's bucket-shop and pay him 
eleven hundred dollars to corner the wheat 
market of the world. That is all I paid him. 
I could not borrow any more. I joined what he 
called a "pool." I think it must have been a 
pool, for I know I fell in and got soaked! 

That bump set me to thinking. My fever 
began to reduce. I got the thirty-third degree 
in financial suckerdom for only eleven hundred 
dollars. 

I have always regarded Tom as one of my 
great school teachers. I have always regarded 
the eleven hundred as the finest investment I 
had made up to that time, for I got the most 
out of it. I do not feel hard toward gold- 
brick men and "blue sky" venders. I some- 

94 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

times feel that we should endow them. How 
else can we save a sucker? You cannot tell 
him anything, because he is naturally bright 
and knows better. You simply have to trim 
him till he bleeds. 



I Am Cured 

It is worth eleven hundred dollars every day 
to know that one sentence, You cannot get 
something for nothing. Life just begins to get 
juicy when you know it. Today when I open a 
newspaper and see a big ad, "Grasp a Fortune 
Now!" I will not do it! I stop my subscription 
to that paper. I simply will not take a paper 
with that ad in it, for I have graduated from 
that class. 

I will not grasp a fortune now. Try me, I 
dare you! Bring a fortune right up on this 
platform and put it down there on the floor. I 
will not grasp it. Come away, it is a coffee- 
pot! 

Today when somebody offers me much more 
than the legal rate of interest I know he is no 
friend of our family. 

If he offers me a hundred per cent. I call for 
the police! 

Today when I get a confidential letter that 
starts out, "You have been selected — " I never 
read farther than the word "selected." Meet- 

95 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

ing is adjourned. I select the waste-basket. 
Here, get in there just as quick as you can. I 
was selected! 

0, Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son ! Learn 
it early in life. The law of compensation is 
never suspended. You only own what you earn. 
You can't get something for nothing. If you 
do not learn it, you will have to be "selected." 
There is no other way for you, because you are 
naturally bright. When you get a letter, "You 
have been selected to receive a thousand per 
cent, dividends," it means you have been se- 
lected to receive this bunch of blisters because 
you look like the biggest sucker on the local 
landscape. 

The other night in a little town of perhaps a 
thousand, a banker took me up into his office 
after the lecture in which I had related some of 
the above experiences. "The audience laughed 
with you and thought it very funny," said he. 
"I couldn't laugh. It was too pathetic. It was 
a picture of what is going on in our own little 
community year after year. I wish you could 
see what I have to see. I wish you could see 
the thousands of hard-earned dollars that go 
out of our community every year into just such 
wildcat enterprises as you described. The sad- 
dest part of it is that the money nearly always 
goes out of the pockets of the people who can 
least afford to lose it." 

96 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

Absalom, wake up ! This is bargain night for 
you. I paid eleven hundred dollars to tell you 
this one thing, and you get it for a dollar or 
two. This is no cheap lecture. It cost blood. 

Learn that the gambler never owns his win- 
nings. The man who accumulates by sharp 
practices or by undue profits never owns it. 
Even the young person who has large fortune 
given him does not own it. We only own what 
we have rendered definite service to bound. 
The owning is in the understanding of values. 

This is true physically, mentally, morally. 
You only own what you have earned and stored 
in your life, not merely in your pocket, stom- 
ach or mind. 

I often think if it takes me thirty-four years 
to begin to learn one sentence, I see the need 
of an eternity. 

To me that is one of the great arguments for 
eternal life — how slowly I learn, and how much 
there is to learn. It will take an eternity! 



Those Commencement Orations 

The young person says, "By next June I shall 
have finished my education." Bless them all! 
They will have put another string on their 
fiddle. 

After they "finish" they have a commence- 
ment, not an end-ment, as they think. This is 

97 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

not to sneer, but to cheer. Isn't it glorious that 
life is one infinite succession of commencements 
and promotions! 

I love to attend commencements. The stage 
is so beautifully decorated and the joy of youth 
is everywhere. There is a row. of geraniums 
along the front of the stage and a big oleander 
on the side. There is a long-whiskered rug in 
the middle. The graduates sit in a semicircle 
upon the stage in their new patent leather. I 
know how it hurts. It is the first time they 
have worn it. 

Then they make their orations. Every time 
I hear their orations I like them better, because 
every year I am getting younger. Damsel 
Number One comes forth and begins : 

"Beyond the Alps (sweep arms forward to 
the left, left arm leading) lieth Italy !" (Bring 
arms down, letting fingers follow the wrist. 
How embarrassing at a commencement for the 
fingers not to follow the wrist ! It is always a 
shock to the audience when the wrist sweeps 
downward and the fingers remain up in the 
air. So by all means, let the fingers follow the 
wrist, just as the elocution teacher marked on 
page 69.) 

Applause, especially from relatives. 

Sweet Girl Graduate Number 2, generally 
comes second. S. G. G. No. 2 stands at the 
same leadpencil mark on the floor, resplendent 

98 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

in a filmy creation caught with something or 
other. 

"We (hands at half-mast and separating) 
are rowing (business of propelling aerial boat 
with two fingers of each hand, head inclined). 
We are not drifting (hands slide downward)." 

Children, we are not laughing at you. We 
are laughing at ourselves. We are laughing 
the happy laugh at how we have learned these 
great truths that you have memorized, but not 
vitalized. 

You get the most beautiful and sublime 
truths from Emerson's essays. (How did they 
eyer have commencements before Emerson?) 
But that is not knowing them. You cannot 
know them until you have lived them. It is a 
grand thing to say, "Beyond the Alps lieth 
Italy," but you can never really say that until 
you know it by struggling up over Alps of 
difficulty and seeing the Italy of promise and 
victory beyond. It is fine to say, "We are row- 
ing and not drifting," but you cannot really say 
that until you have pulled on the oar. 

0, Gussie, get an oar! 



My Maiden Sermon 

Did you ever hear a young preacher, just 
captured, just out of a factory? Did you ever 
hear him preach his "maiden sermon"? I 

99 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

wish you had heard mine. I had a call. At 
least, I thought I had a call. I think now I was 
"short-circuited." The "brethren" waited upon 
me and told men I had been "selected" : Maybe 
this was a local call, not long distance. 

They gave me six weeks in which to load 
the gospel gun and get ready for my try-out. 
I certainly loaded it to the muzzle. 

But I made the mistake I am trying to warn 
you against. Instead of going to the one book 
where I might have gotten a sermon — the book 
of my experience, I went to the books in my 
father's library. "As the poet Shakespeare 
has so beautifully said," and then I took a 
chunk of Shakespeare and nailed it on page five 
of my sermon. "List to the poet Tennyson." 
Come here, Lord Alfred. So I soldered these 
fragments from the books together with my 
own native genius. I worked that sermon up 
into the most beautiful splurges and spasms. 
I bedecked it with metaphors and semaphores. 
I filled it with climaxes, both wet and dry. I 
had a fine wet climax on page fourteen, where 
I had made a little mark in the margin which 
meant "cry here." This was the spilling-point 
of the wet climax. I was to cry on the left- 
hand side of the page. 

I committed it all to memory, and then went 
to a lady who taught expression, to get it ex- 
pressed. You have to get it expressed. 

I got the most beautiful gestures nailed into 
100 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

almost every page. You know about gestures 
— these things you make with your arms in 
the air as you speak. You can notice it on me 
yet. 

I am not sneering at expression. Expression 
is a noble art. All life is expression. But you 
have to get something to express. Here I made 
my mistake. I got a lot of fine gestures. I got 
an express- wagon and got no load for it. So it 
rattled. I got a necktie, but failed to get any 
man to hang it upon. I got up before a mirror 
for six weeks, day by day, and said the sermon 
to the glass. It got so it would run itself. I 
could have gone to sleep and that sermon 
would not have hesitated. 

Then came the grand day. The boy wonder 
stood forth and before his large and enthusi- 
astic concourse delivered that maiden sermon 
more grandly than ever to a mirror. Every 
gesture went off the bat according to the blue- 
print. I cried on page fourteen! I never 
knew it was in me. But I certainly got it all 
out that day! 

Then I did another fine thing, I sat down. I 
wish now I had done that earlier. I wish now 
I had sat down before I got up. I was the 
last man out of the church — and I hurried. 
But they beat me out — all nine of them. 
When I went out the door, the old sexton said 
as he jiggled the key in the door to hurry me, 
"Don't feel bad, bub, I've heerd worse than 
101 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

that. You're all right, bub, but you don't know 
nothin' yet." 

I cried all the way to town. If he had 
plunged a dagger into me he would not have 
hurt me so much. It has taken some years to 
learn that the old man was right. I had won- 
derful truth in that sermon. No sermon ever 
had greater truth, but I had not lived it. The 
old man meant I did not know my own 
sermon. 

•j» «p 9p 

So, children, when you prepare your com- 
mencement oration, write about what you know 
best, what you have lived. If you know more 
about peeling potatoes than about anything 
else, write about "Peeling Potatoes," and you 
are most likely to hear the applause peal from 
that part of your audience unrelated to you. 

Out of every thousand books published, per- 
haps nine hundred of them do not sell enough 
to pay the cost of printing them. As you study 
the books that do live, you note that they are 
the books that have been lived. Perhaps the 
books that fail have just as much of truth in 
them and they may even be better written, yet 
they lack the vital impulse. They come out of 
the author's head. The books that live must 
come out of his heart. They are his own life. 
They come surging and pulsating from the 
book of his experience. 

102 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

The best part of our schooling comes not 
from the books, but from the men behind the 
books. 

We study agriculture from books. That 
does not make us an agriculturist. We must 
take a hoe and go out and agricult. That is the 
knowing in the doing. 



You Must Live Your Song 

"There was never a picture painted, 

There was never a poem sung, 
But the soul of the artist fainted, 
And the poet's heart was wrung." 

So many young people think because they 
have a good voice and they have cultivated it, 
they are singers. All this cultivation and irri- 
tation and irrigation and gargling of the throat 
are merely symptoms of a singer — merely 
neckties. Singers look better with neckties. 

They think the song comes from the 
diaphragm. But it comes from the heart, 
chaperoned by the diaphragm. You cannot 
sing a song you have not lived. 

Jessie was singing the other day at a Chau- 
tauqua. She has a beautiful voice, and she 
has been away to "Ber-leen" to have it at- 
tended to. She sang that afternoon in the 
tent, "The Last Rose of Summer." She sang 
it with every note so well placed, with the 
sweetest little trills and tendrils, with the smile 

103 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

exactly like her teacher had taught her. Jes- 
sie exhibited all the machinery and trimmings 
for the song, but she had no steam, no song. 
She sang the notes. She might as well have 
sung, "Pop, Goes the Weasel." 

The audience politely endured Jessie. That 
night a woman sang in the same tent "The Last 
Rose of Summer." She had never been to Ber- 
lin, but she had lived that song. She didn't 
dress the notes half so beautifully as Jessie 
did, but she sang it with the tremendous feel- 
ing it demands. The audience went wild. It 
was a case of Gussie and Bill Whackem. 

All this was gall and wormwood to Jessie. 
"Child," I said to her, "this is the best singing 
lesson you have ever had. Your study is all 
right and you have a better voice than that 
woman, but you cannot sing The Last Rose of 
Summer' yet, for you do not know very much 
about the first rose of summer. And really, I 
hope you'll never know the ache and disap- 
pointment you must know before you can sing 
that song, for it is the sob of a broken-hearted 
woman. Learn to sing the songs you have 
lived." 

Why do singers try to execute songs beyond 
the horizon of their lives? That is why they 
"execute" them. 



104 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

The Success of a Song-Writer 

The guest of honor at a dinner in a Chicago 
club was a woman who is one of the widely 
known song-writers of this land. As I had the 
good fortune to be sitting at table with her I 
wanted to ask her, "How did you get your 
songs known? How did you know what kind 
of songs the people want to sing?" 

But in the hour she talked with her friends 
around the table I found the answer to every 
question. "Isn't it good to be here? Isn't it 
great to have friends and a fine home and 
money ?" she said. "I have had such a struggle 
in my life. I have lived on one meal a day and 
didn't know where the next meal was coming 
from. I know what it is to be left alone in the 
world upon my own resources. I have had 
years of struggle. I have been sick and dis- 
couraged and down and out. It was in my 
little back-room, the only home I had, that I 
began to write songs. I wrote them for my 
own relief. I was writing my own life, just 
what was in my own heart and what the 
struggles were teaching me. No one is more 
surprised and grateful that the world seems 
to love my songs and asks for more of them." 

The woman was Carrie Jacobs-Bond, who 
wrote "The Perfect Day," "Just a Wearyin* for 
You," "His Lullaby" and many more of those 
simple little songs so full of the pathos and 

105 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

philosophy of life that they tug at your heart 
and moisten your eyes. 

Anybody could write those songs — just a 
few simple words and notes. No. Books of 
theory and harmony and expression only teach 
us how to write the words and where to place 
the notes. These are not the song, but only 
the skeleton into which our own life must 
breathe the life of the song. 

The woman who sat there clad in black, with 
her sweet, expressive face crowned with silvery 
hair, had learned to write her songs in the 
University of Hard Knocks. She here became 
the song philosopher she is today. Her defeats 
were her victories. If Carrie Jacobs-Bond had 
never struggled with discouragement, sick- 
ness, poverty and loneliness, she never would 
have been able to write the songs that appeal 
to the multitudes who have the same battles. 

The popular song is the song that best 
voices what is in the popular heart. And 
while we have a continual inundation of popu- 
lar songs that are trashy and voice the tawd- 
riest human impulses, yet it is a tribute to the 
good elements in humanity that the whole- 
some, uplifting sentiments in Carrie Jacobs- 
Bond's songs continue to hold their popularity. 

Theory and Practice 

My friends, I am not arguing that you and 

106 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

I must drink the dregs of defeat, or that our 
lives must fill up with poverty or sorrow, or 
become wrecks. But I am insisting upon what 
I see written all around me in the affairs of 
everyday life, that none of us will ever know 
real success in any line of human endeavor 
until that success flows from the fullness of 
our experience just as the songs came from 
the life of Carrie Jacobs-Bond. 

The world is full of theorists, dreamers, up- 
lifters, reformers, who have worthy visions 
but are not able to translate them into prac- 
tical realities. They go around with their 
heads in the clouds, looking upward, and half 
the time their feet are in the flower-beds or 
trampling upon their fellow men they dream 
of helping. Their ideas must be forged into 
usefulness available for this day upon the an- 
vil of experience. 

Many of the most brilliant theorists have 
been the greatest failures in practice. 

There are a thousand who can tell you what 
is the matter with things to one person who 
can give you a practical way to fix them. 

I used to have respect amounting to rever- 
ence for great readers and book men. I used 
to know a man who could tell in what book 
almost anything you could think of was dis- 
cussed, and perhaps the page. He was a walk- 
ing library index. I thought him a most won- 

10? 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

derf ul man. Indeed, in my childhood I thought 
he was the greatest man in the world. 

He was a remarkable man — a great reader 
and with a memory that retained it all. That 
man could recite chapters and volumes. He 
could give you almost any date. He could 
finish almost any quotation. His conversation 
was largely made up of classical quotations. 

But he was one of the most helpless men I 
have ever seen in practical life. He seemed 
to be unable to think and reason for himself. 
He could quote a page of John Locke, but some- 
how the page didn't supply the one sentence 
needed for the occasion. The man was a mis- 
fit on earth. He was liable to put the gravy 
in his coffee and the gasoline in the fire. He 
seemed never to have digested any of the 
things in his memory. Since I have grown 
up I always think of that man as an intellect- 
ual cold storage plant. 

The greatest book is the textbook of the 
University of Hard Knocks, the Book of 
Human Experience* — the "sermons in stones" 
and the "books in running brooks." Most 
fortunate is he who has learned to read under- 
standing^ from it. 

V •*• •** 

Note the sweeping, positive statements of 
the young person. 

108 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

Note the cautious, specific statements of the 
person who has lived long in this world. 

Our education is our progress from the 
sweeping, positive, wholesale statements we 
have not proved, to the cautious, specific state- 
ments we have proved. 



Tuning the Strings of Life 

Many audiences are gathered into this one 
audience. Each person here is a different 
audience, reading a different page in the Book 
of Human Experience. Each has a different 
fight to make and a different burden to carry. 
Each one of us has more trouble than anybody 
else! 

I know there are chapters of heroism in the 
lives of you older ones. You have cried your- 
selves to sleep, some of you, and walked the 
floor when you could not sleep. You have 
learned that "beyond the Alps lieth Italy." 

A good many of you were bumped today or 
yesterday, or maybe years ago, and the wound 
has not healed. You think it never will heal. 
You came here thinking that perhaps you 
would forget your trouble for a little while. 
I know there are people in this audience in 
pain. Never do this many gather but what 
there are some with aching hearts. 

And you young people here with lives like 
109 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

June mornings, are not much interested in this 
lecture. You are polite and attentive because 
this is a polite and attentive neighborhood. 
But down in your hearts you are asking, 
"What is this all about? What is that man 
talking about? I haven't had these things and 
I'm not going to have them, either!" 

Maybe some of you are naturally bright ! 

You are going to be bumped. You are going 
to cry yourselves to sleep. You are going to 
walk the floor when you cannot sleep. Some 
of you are going to know the keen sorrow of 
having the one you trust most betray you. 
Maybe, betray you with a kiss. You will go 
through your Gethsemane. You will see your 
dearest plans wrecked. You will see all that 
seems to make life livable lost out of your 
horizon. You will say, "God, let me die. I 
have nothing more to live for." 

For all lives have about the same elements. 
Your life is going to be about like other lives. 



And you are going to learn the wonderful 
lesson thru the years, the bumps and the 
tears, that all these things somehow are neces- 
sary to promote our education. 

These bumps and hard knocks do not break 
the fiddle — they turn the pegs. 

These bumps and tragedies and Waterloos 
draw the strings of the soul tighter and 

110 



THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER" 

tighter, nearer and nearer to God's great 
concert pitch, where the discords fade from 
our lives and where the music divine and har- 
monies celestial come from the same old 
strings that had been sending forth the noise 
and discord. 

Thus we know that our education is pro- 
gressing, as the evil and unworthy go out of 
our lives and as peace, harmony, happiness, 
love and understanding come into our lives. 

That is getting in tune. 

That is growing up. 



Ill 



VIII 

Looking Backward 
Memories of the Price We Pay 

WHAT a price we pay for what we 
know! I laugh as I look backward 
— and weep and rejoice. 
I was not born with a silver spoon in my 
mouth, altho it is quite evident that I could 
have handled a pretty good-sized spoon. But 
father being a country preacher, we had tin 
spoons. We never had to tie a red string 
around our spoons when we loaned them for 
the ladies' aid society oyster supper. We al- 
ways got our spoons back. Nobody ever traded 
with us by mistake. 

Do you remember the first money you ever 
earned? I do. I walked several miles into 
the country those old reaper days and gathered 
sheaves. That night I was proud when that 
farmer patted me on the head and said, "You 
are the best boy to work, I ever saw." Then 
the cheerful old miser put a nickel in my blis- 
tered hand. That nickel looked bigger than 
any money I have since handled. 

•J* •*• *e 

That "Last Day of School" 

Yet I was years learning it is much easier 
112 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

to make money than to handle it, hence the 
tale that follows. 

I was sixteen years old and a school teacher. 
Sweet sixteen — which means green sixteen. 
But remember again, only green things grow. 
There is hope for green things. I was so tall 
and awkward then — I haven't changed much 
since. I kept still about my age. I was sev- 
eral dollars the lowest bidder. They said out 
that way, "Anybody can teach kids." That 
is why I was a teacher. 

I had never studied pedagogy, but I had 
whittled out three rules that I thought would 
make it go. My first rule was, Make 'em 
study. My second, Make 'em recite. That is, 
fill 'em up and then empty 'em. 

My third and most important rule was, 
Get your money! 

I walked thirteen miles a day, six and a 
half miles each way, most of the time, to save 
money. I think I had all teaching methods in 
use. With the small fry I used a small paddle 
to win their confidence and arouse their en- 
thusiasm for an education. With the pupils 
larger and more muscular than their teacher 
I used love and moral suasion. 

We ended the school with an "exhibition." 
Did you ever attend the old back-country 
"last day of school exhibition"? The people 
that day came from all over the township. 
They were so glad our school was closing they 

113 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

all turned out to make it a success. They 
brought great baskets, of provender and we 
had a feast. We covered the school desks with 
boards, and then covered the boards with piles 
of fried chicken, doughnuts and forty kinds 
of pie. 

Then we had a "doings." Everybody did a 
stunt. We executed a lot of literature that 
day. Execute is the word that tells what 
happened to literature in District No. 1, Jack- 
son Township, that day. I can shut my eyes 
and see it yet. I can see my pupils coming for- 
ward to speak their "pieces." I hardly knew 
them and they hardly knew me, for we were 
"dressed up." Many a head showed father 
had mowed it with the sheepshears. Mother 
had been busy with the wash-rag — clear back 
of the ears! And into them! So many of 
them wore collars that stuck out all stiff like 
they had pushed their heads on thru their big 
straw hats. 

I can see them speaking their "pieces." I can 
see "The Soldier of the Legion lay dying in 
Algiers." We had him die again that day, and 
he had a lingering end as we executed him. I 
can see "The boy stood on the burning deck, 
whence all but he had fled." I can see 
"Mary's little lamb" come skipping over the 
stage. I see the tow-headed patriot in "Give 
me liberty or give me death." I feel now that 

114 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

if Patrick Henry had been present, he would 
have said, "Give me death." 

There came a breathless hush as "teacher" 
came forward as the last act on the bill to 
say farewell. It was customary to cry. I 
wanted to yell. Tomorrow I would get my 
money! I had a speech I had been saying 
over and over until it would say itself. But 
somehow when I got up before that "last day 
of school" audience and opened my mouth, it 
was a great opening, but nothing came out. 
It came out of my eyes. Tears rolled down 
my cheeks until I could hear them spatter on 
my six-dollar suit. 

And my pupils wept as their dear teacher 
said farewell. Parents wept. It was a teary 
time. I only said, "Weep not for me, dear 
friends. I am going away, but I am coming 
back." I thought to cheer them up, but they 
wept the more. 

Next day I drew my money. I had it all in 
one joyous wad — $240. I was going home 
with head high and aircastles even higher. 
But I never got home with the money. Talk 
about the fool and his money and you get 
very personal. 

For on the way home I met Deacon K, and 

he borrowed it all. Deacon K was "such a 

good man" and a "pillar of the church." I 

used to wonder, tho, why he didn't take a 

115 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

pillow to church. I took his note for $240, 
"due at corncutting," as we termed that an- 
nual fall-time paying up season. I really 
thought a note was not necessary, such was 
my confidence in the deacon. 

For years I kept a faded, tear-spattered, 
yellow note for $240, "due at corncutting," as 
a souvenir of my first schoolteaching. Deacon 
K has gone from earth. He has gone to his 
eternal reward. I scarcely know whether to 
look up or down as I say that. He never left 
any forwarding address. 

I was paid thousands in experience for that 
first schoolteaching, but I paid all the money 
I got from it — two hundred and forty thir- 
teen-mile-a-day dollars to learn one thing I 
could not learn from the books, that it takes 
less wisdom to make money, than it does to 
intelligently handle it afterwards. Inciden- 
tally I learned it may be safer to do business 
with a first-class sinner than with a second- 
class saint. 

Which is no slap at the church, but at its 
worst enemies, the foes of its own household. 



Calling the Class-Roll 

A lyceum bureau once sent me back to my 
home town to lecture. I imagine most lec- 
turers have a hard time lecturing in the home 
town. Their schoolmates and playmates are 

116 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

apt to be down there in the front rows with 
their families, and maybe all the old scores 
have not yet been settled. The boy he fought 
with may be down there. Perhaps the girl 
who gave him the "mitten" is there. 

And he has gotten his lecture out of that 
home town. The heroes and villains live 
there within striking distance. Perhaps they 
have come to hear him. "Is not this the car- 
penter's son?" Perhaps this is why some lec- 
turers and authors are not so popular in the 
home town until several generations pass. 

I went back to the same hall to speak, and 
stood upon the same platform where twenty- 
one years before I had stood to deliver my 
graduating oration, when in impassioned and 
well modulated tones I had exclaimed, "Greece 
is gone and Rome is no more, but fe-e-e-e-ear 
not, for I will sa-a-a-a-ave you!" or words to 
that effect. 



Then I went back to the little hotel and sat 
up alone in my room half the night living it 
over. Time was when I thought anybody who 
could live in that hotel was a superior order 
of being. But the time had come when I 
knew the person who could go on living in any 
hotel has a superior order of vitality. 

I held thanksgiving services that night. I 
could see better. I had a picture of the school 

117 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

in that town that had been taken twenty-one 
years before, just before commencement. I 
had not seen the picture these twenty-one 
years, for I could not then afford to buy one. 
The price was a quarter. 

I got a truer perspective of life that night. 
Did you ever sit alone with a picture of your 
classmates taken twenty-one years before? It 
is a memorable experience. 

A class of brilliant and gifted young people 
went out to take charge of the world. They 
were so glad the world had waited so long on 
them. They were so willing to take charge 
of the world. They were going to be presi- 
dents and senators and authors and author- 
esses and scientists and scientist-esses and 
geniuses and genius-esses and things like that. 

There was one boy in the class who was not 
naturally bright. It was not the one you may 
be thinking of! No, it was Jim Lambert. He 
had no brilliant career in view. He was dull 
and seemed to lack intellect. He was "con- 
ditioned" into the senior class. We all felt a 
little sorry for Jim. 

As commencement day approached, the 
committee of the class appointed for that pur- 
pose took Jim back of the schoolhouse and 
broke the news to him that they were going 
to let him graduate, but they were not going 
to let him speak, because he couldn't make a 
speech that would do credit to such a brilliant 

118 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

class. They hid Jim on the stage back of the 
oleander commencement night. 

Shake the barrel! 

The girl who was to become the authoress 
became the helloess in the home telephone ex- 
change, and had become absolutely indispen- 
sable to the community. The girl who was 
to become the poetess became the goddess at 
the general delivery window and superinten- 
dent of the stamp-licking department of the 
home postoffice. The boy who was going to 
Congress was raising the best corn in the 
county, and his wife was speaker of the house. 

Most of them were doing very well — even 
Jim Lambert. Jim had become the head of 
one of the big manufacturing plants of the 
South, with a lot of men working for him. 
The committee that took him out behind the 
schoolhouse to inform him he could not speak 
at commencement, would now have to wait in 
line before a frosted door marked, "Mr. Lam- 
bert, Private. ,, They would have to send up 
their cards, and the watchdog who guards the 
door would tell them, "Cut it short, he's 
busy!" before they could break any news to 
him today. 

They hung a picture of Mr. Lambert in the 
high school at the last alumni meeting. They 
hung it on the wall near where the oleander 
stood that night. 

Dull boy or girl — you with your eyes tear- 

119 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

dimmed sometimes because you do not seem 
to learn like some in your classes — can you 
not get a bit of cheer from the story of Jim? 



Hours pass, and still as I sat in that hotel 
room I was lost in that school picture and the 
twenty-one years. There were fifty-four 
young people in that picture. They had been 
shaken these years in the barrel, and now as 
I called the roll on them, most of them that 
I expected to go up had shaken down and 
some that I expected to stay down had 
shaken up. 

Out of that fifty-four, one had gone to a 
pulpit, one had gone to Congress and one had 
gone to the penitentiary. Some had gone to 
brilliant success and some had gone down to 
sad failure. Some had found happiness and 
some had found unhappiness. It seemed as 
tho almost every note on the keyboard of 
human possibility had been struck by the one 
school of fifty-four. 

When that picture was taken the oldest was 
not more than eighteen, yet most of them 
seemed already to have decided their destinies. 
The twenty-one years that followed had not 
changed their courses. 

The only changes had come where God had 
come into a life to uplift it, or where Mammon 
had entered to pull it down. And I saw better 

120 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

that the foolish dreams of success faded be- 
fore the natural unfolding of talents, which is 
the real success. I saw better that "the boy 
is father to the man." 

The boy who" skimmed over his work in 
school was skimming over his work as a man. 
The boy who went to the bottom of things in 
school was going to the bottom of things in 
manhood. Which had helped him to go to the 
top of things! 

Jim Lambert had merely followed the call 
of talents unseen in him twenty-one years 
before. 

The lazy boy became a "tired" man. The 
industrious boy became an industrious man. 
The sporty boy became a sporty man. The 
domineering egotist boy became the domineer- 
ing egotist man. 

The boy who traded knives with me and 
beat me — how I used to envy him! Why was 
it he could always get the better of me? Well, 
he went on trading knives and getting the 
better of people. Now, twenty-one years 
afterwards, he was doing time in the state 
penitentiary for forgery. He was now called 
a bad man, when twenty-one years ago when 
he did the same things on a smaller scale 
they called him smart and bright. 

The "perfectly lovely" boy who didn't mix 
with the other boys, who didn't whisper, who 
never got into trouble, who always had his 

121 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

hair combed, and said, "If you please," used 
to hurt me. He was the teacher's model boy. 
All the mothers of the community used to 
say to their own reprobate offspring, "Why 
can't you be like Harry? He'll be President 
of the United States some day, and you'll be 
in jail." But Model Harry sat around all his 
life being a model. I believe Mr. Webster de- 
fines a model as a small imitation of the real 
thing. Harry certainly was a successful 
model. He became a seedy, sleepy, helpless 
relic at forty. He was "perfectly lovely" be- 
cause he hadn't the energy to be anything 
else. It was the boys who had the hustle and 
the energy, who occasionally needed bumping 
— and who got it — who really grew. 

I have said little about the girls of the 
school. Fact was, at that age I didn't pay 
much attention to them. I regarded them 
as in the way. But I naturally thought 
of Clarice, our social pet of the class 
— our real pretty girl who won the vase in the 
home paper beauty contest. Clarice went 
right on remaining in the social spotlight, 
primping and flirting. She outshone all the 
rest. But it seemed like she was all out-shine 
and no in-shine. She mistook popularity for 
success. The boys voted for her, but did not 
marry her. Most of the girls who shone with 
less social luster became the happy home- 
makers of the community. 

122 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

But as I looked into the face of Jim Lam- 
bert in the picture, my heart warmed at the 
sight of another great success — a sweet-faced 
Irish lass who became an "old maid." She had 
worked day by day all these years to support 
a home and care for her family. She had kept 
her grace and sweetness thru it all, and the in- 
fluence of her white, loving life radiated far. 



The Boy I Had Envied 

Frank was the boy I had envied. He had 
everything — a fine home, a loving father, 
plenty of money, opportunity and a great 
career awaiting him. And he was bright and 
lovable and talented. Everybody said Frank 
would make his mark in the world and make 
the town proud of him. , 

I was the janitor of the schoolhouse. Some 
of my classmates will never know how their 
thoughtless jeers and jokes wounded the 
sensitive, shabby boy who swept the floors, 
built the fires and carried in the coal. After 
commencement my career seemed to end and 
the careers of Frank and the rest of them 
seemed to begin. They were going off to col- 
lege and going to do so many wonderful 
things. 

But the week after commencement I had to 
go into a printing office, roll up my sleeves 

123 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

and go to work in the "devil's corner" to earn 
my daily bread. Seemed like it took so much 
bread ! 

Many a time as I plugged at the "case" I 
would think of Frank and wonder why some 
people had all the good things and I had all 
the hard things. 

How easy it is to see as you look backward. 
But how hard it is to see when you look for- 
ward. 

Twenty-one years afterward as I got off the 
train in the home town, I asked, "Where is 
he?" We went out to the cemetery, where I 
stood at a grave and read on the headstone, 
"Frank." 

I had the story of a tragedy — the tragedy 
of modern unpreparedness. It was the story 
of the boy who had every opportunity, but 
who had all the struggle taken out of his life. 
He never followed his career, never developed 
any strength. He disappointed hopes, spent a 
fortune, broke his father's heart, shocked the 
community, and finally ended his wasted life 
with a bullet fired by his own hand. 

Why Ben Hur Won 

It revived the memory of the story of Ben 
Hur. 

Do you remember it? The Jewish boy is 
torn from his home in disgrace. He is hailed 
124 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

into court and tried for a crime he never com- 
mitted. Ben Hur did not get a fair trial. No- 
body can get a fair trial at the hands of this 
world. That is why the great Judge has said, 
judge not, for you have not the full evidence 
in the case. I alone have that. 

Then they condemn him. They lead him 
away to the galleys. They chain him to the 
bench and to the oar. There follow the days 
and long years when he pulls on the oar under 
the lash. Day after day he pulls on the oar. 
Day after day he writhes under the sting of 
the lash. Years of the cruel injustice pass. 
Ben Hur is the helpless victim of a mocking 
fate. 

That seems to be your life and my life. In 
the kitchen or the office, or wherever we work, 
we seem so often like slaves bound to the oar 
and pulling under the sting of the lash of 
necessity. Life seems one futureless round of 
drudgery. We wonder why. We often look 
across the street and see somebody who lives 
a happier life. That one is chained to no oar. 
See what a fine time they all have. Why must 
we pull on the oar ? 

How blind we are! We can only see our 
own oar. We cannot see that they, too, pull 
on the oar and feel the lash. Most likely they 
are looking back at us and envying us. For 
while we envy others, others are envying us. 

But look at the chariot race in Antioch. See 

125 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

the thousands in the circus. See Messala, the 
haughty Eoman, and see! Ben Hur from the 
galleys in the other chariot pitted against 
him. Down the course dash these twin thun- 
derbolts. The thousands hold their breath. 
"Who will win?" "The man with the stronger 
forearms/' they whisper. 

There comes the crucial moment in the race. 
See the man with the stronger forearms. 
They are bands of steel that swell in the fore- 
arms of Ben Hur. They swing those flying 
Arabians into the inner ring. Ben Hur wins 
the race! Where got the Jew those huge 
forearms? From the galleys! 

Had Ben Hur never pulled on the oar, he 
never could have won the chariot race. 

Sooner or later you and I are to learn that 
Providence makes no mistakes in the book- 
keeping. As we pull on the oar, so often lashed 
by grim necessity, every honest effort is 
laid up at compound interest in the 
bank account of strength. Sooner or later the 
time comes when we need every ounce. Sooner 
or later our chariot race is on — when we win 
the victory, strike the deciding blow, stand 
while those around us fall — and it is won with 
the forearms earned in the galleys of life by 
pulling on the oar. 

•$• *x* *z* 

That is why I thanked God as I stood at the 

126 



LOOKING BACKWARD 

grave of my classmate. I thanked God for 
parents who believed in the gospel of struggle, 
and for the circumstances that compelled it. 

I am not an example of success. 

But I am a very grateful pupil in the first 
reader class of The University of Hard 
Knocks, 



127 



IX 

Go On South! 
The Book in the Running Brook 

THERE is a little silvery sheet of water 
in Minnesota called Lake Itaca. There 
is a place where a little stream leaps 
out from the lake. 

"Ole!" you will exclaim, "the lake is leak- 
ing. What is the name of this little creek?" 

"Creek! It bane no creek. It bane Missis- 
sippi river." 

So even the Father of Waters has to begin 
as a creek. We are at the cradle where the 
baby river leaps forth. We all start about 
alike. It wabbles around thru the woods of 
Minnesota. It doesn't know where it is go- 
ing, but it is "on the way." 

It keeps wabbling around, never giving up 
and quitting, and it gets to the place where 
all of us get sooner or later. The place where 
Paul came on the road to Damascus. The 
place of the "heavenly vision." 

It is the place where gravity says, "Little 
Mississippi, do you want to grow? Then you 
will have to go south." 

The little Mississippi starts south. He says 
to the people, "Goodbye, folks, I am going 
south." The folks at Itascaville say, "Why, 

128 



GO ON SOUTH 

Mississippi, you are foolish. You hain't got 
water enough to get out of the county." That 
is a fact, but he is not trying to get out of the 
county. The Mississippi is only trying to go 
south. 

The Mississippi knows nothing about the 
Gulf of Mexico. He does not know that he has 
to go hundreds of miles south. He is only 
trying to go south. He has not much water, 
but he does not wait for a relative to die and 
bequeath him some water. That is a beauti- 
ful thought! He has water enough to start 
south, and he does that. 

He goes a foot south, then another foot 
south. He goes a mile south. He picks up a 
little stream and he has some more water. He 
goes on south. He picks up another stream 
and grows some more. Day by day he picks 
up streamlets, brooklets, rivulets. Business is 
picking up! He grows as he flows. Poetry! 

My friends, here is one of the best pictures 
I can find in nature of what it seems to me 
our lives should be. I hear a great many ora- 
tions, especially in high school commence- 
ments, entitled, "The Value of a Goal in Life." 
But the direction is vastly more important 
than the goal. Find the way your life should 
go, and then go and keep on going and you'll 
reach a thousand goals. 

We do not have to figure out how far we 
have to go, nor how many supplies we will 

129 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNC JKS 

need along the way. All we have to do is to 
start and we will find the resources all along 
the way. We will grow as we flow. All of us 
can start ! And then go on south ! 

Success is not tomorrow or next year. Suc- 
cess is now. Success is not at the end of the 
journey, for there is no end. Success is every 
day in flowing and growing. The Mississippi 
is a success in Minnesota as well as on south. 

You and I sooner or later hear the call, "Go 
on south." If we haven't heard it, let us keep 
our ear to the receiver and live a more natural 
life, so that we can hear the call. We are all 
called. It is a divine call — the call of our un- 
folding talents to be used. 

Remember, the Mississippi goes south. If 
he had gone any other direction he would 
never have been heard of. 

Three wonderful things develop as the Mis- 
sissippi goes on south. 

1. He keeps on going on south and growing 
greater. 

2. He overcomes his obstacles and develops 
his power. 

3. He blesses the valley, but the valley does 
not bless him. 

V •*• •*• 

Go On South and Grow Greater 

You never meet the Mississippi after he 

130 



GO ON SOUTH 

starts south, but what he is going on south 
and growing greater. You never meet him 
but what he says, "Excuse me, but I must go 
on south." 

The Mississippi gets to St. Paul and Min- 
neapolis. He is a great river now — the most 
successful river in the state. But he does not 
retire upon his laurels. He goes on* south and 
grows greater. He goes on south to St. Louis. 
He is a wonderful river now. But he does 
not stop. He goes on south and grows greater. 

Everywhere you meet him he is going on 
south and growing greater. 

Do you know why the Mississippi goes on 
south? To continue to be the Mississippi. If 
he should stop and stagnate, he would not be 
the Mississippi river; he would become a stag- 
nant, poisonous pond. 

As long as people keep on going south, they 
keep on living. When they stop and stagnate, 
they die. 

That is why I am making it the slogan of 
my life — GO ON SOUTH AND GROW 
GREATER! I hope I can make you remember 
that and say it over each day. I wish I could 
write it over the pulpits, over the school- 
rooms, over the business houses and homes — 
GO ON SOUTH AND GROW GREATER. For 
this is life, and there is no other. This is 
education — and religion. And the only busi- 
ness of life. 

131 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

You and I start well. We go on south a 
little ways, and then we retire. Even young 
people as they start south and make some 
little knee-pants achievement, some kinder- 
garten touchdown, succumb to their press 
notices. Their friends crowd around them to 
congratulate them. "I must congratulate you 
upon your success. You have arrived." 

So many of those young goslings believe 
that. They quit and get canned. They think 
they have gotten to the Gulf of Mexico when 
they have not gotten out of the woods of Min- 
nesota. Go on south! 

We can protect ourselves fairly well from our 
enemies, but heaven deliver us from our fool 
friends. 

Success is so hard to endure. We can en- 
dure ten defeats better than one victory. Suc- 
cess goes to the head and defeat goes to "de 
feet." It makes them work harder. 



The Plague of Incompetents 

Civilization is mostly a conspiracy to keep 
us from going very far south. The one who 
keeps on going south defies custom and be- 
comes unorthodox. 

But contentment with present achievement 
is the damnation of the race. 

The mass of the human family never go on 
south far enough to become good servants, 

132 



GO ON SOUTH 

workmen or artists. The young people get a 
smattering and squeeze into the bottom posi- 
tion and never go on south to efficiency and 
promotion. They wonder why their genius is 
not recognized. They do not make it visible. 

Nine out of ten stenographers who apply for 
positions can write a few shorthand characters 
and irritate a typewriter keyboard. They 
think that is being a stenographer, when it is 
merely a symptom of a stenographer. They 
mangle the language, grammar, spelling, capi- 
talization and punctuation. Their eyes are on 
the clock, their minds on the movies. 

Nine out of ten workmen cannot be trusted 
to do what they advertise to do, because they 
have never gone south far enough to become 
efficient. Many a professional man is in the 
same class. 

Half of our life is spent in getting compe- 
tents to repair the botch work of incompetents. 

No matter how well equipped you are, you 
are never safe in your job if you are contented 
to do today just what you did yesterday. Con- 
tented to think today what you thought yester- 
day. 

You must go on south to be safe. 

I used to know a violinist who would say, 
"If I were not a genius, I could not play so well 
with such little practice." The poor fellow did 
not know how poor a fiddler he really was. 
Well did Strickland Gillilan, America's great 
133 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

poet-humorist, say, "Egotism is the opiate that 
Nature administers to deaden the pains of 
mediocrity. 

V V T 

This Is Our Best Day 

Just because our hair gets frosty or begins 
to rub off in spots, we are so prone to say, "I 
am aging rapidly." It pays to advertise. We 
always get results. See the one shrivel who 
goes around front-paging his age. Age is not 
years; age is grunts. 

We say, "I've seen my best days." And the 
undertaker goes and greases his buggy. He 
believes in "preparedness." 

Go on south! We have not seen our best 
days. This is the best day so far, and tomor- 
row is going to be better on south. 

We are only children in God's great kinder- 
garten, playing with our A-B-C's. I do not 
utter that as a bit of sentiment, but as the 
great fundamental of our life. I hope the old- 
est in years sees that best. I hope he says, "I 
am just beginning. Just beginning to under- 
stand. Just beginning to know about life." 

We are not going on south to old age, we are 
going on south to eternal youth. It is the one 
who stops who "ages rapidly." Each day 
brings us a larger vision. Infinity, Eternity, 
Omnipotence, Omniscience are all on south. 

We have left nothing behind but the husks. 

134 



GO ON SOUTH 

I would not trade this moment for all the 
years before it. I have their footings at com- 
pound interest! They are dead. This is life. 

Birthdays and Headmarks 

Yesterday I had a birthday. I looked in the 
glass and communed with my features. I saw 
some gray hairs coming. Hurrah! 

You know what gray hairs are? Did you 
ever get a headmark in school? Gray hairs 
are silver headmarks in our education as we go 
on south. 

You children cheer up. Your black hair and 
auburn hair and the other first reader hair will 
pass and you'll get promoted as you go on 
south. 

Don't worry about gray hair or baldness. 
Only worry about the location of your gray 
hair or baldness. If they get on the inside of 
the head, worry. Do you know why corpora- 
tions sometimes say they do not want to em- 
ploy gray-headed men ? They have found that 
so many of them have quit going on south 'and 
have gotten gray on the inside — or bald. 

These same corporations send out Pinkertons 
and pay any price for gray-headed men — gray 
on the outside and green on the inside. They 
are the most valuable, for they have the vision 
and wisdom of many years and the enthusiasm 
and "pep" and courage of youth. 

135 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

The preacher, the teacher — everyone who 
gets put on the retired list, retires himself. 
He quits going on south. 

The most wonderful person in the world is 
the one who has lived years and years on earth 
and has perhaps gotten gray on the outside, 
but has kept young and fresh on the inside. 
Put that person in the pulpit, in the school- 
room, in the office, behind the ticket-window or 
on the bench — or under the hod — and you find 
the whole world going to that person for direc- 
tion, advice, vision, help, sympathy, love. 



I am happy today as I look back over my 
life. I have been trying to lecture a good while. 
I am almost ashamed to tell you how long, for 
I ought to know more about it by this time. 
But when anybody says, "I heard you lecture 

twenty years ago over at " I stop him. 

"Please don't throw it up to me now. I am 
just as ashamed of it as you are. I am trying 
to do better now." 

0, I want to forget all the past, save its les- 
sons. I am just beginning to live. If anybody 
wants to be my best friend, let him come to me 
and tell me how to improve — -what to do and 
what not to do. Tell me how to give a better 
lecture. 

Years ago a bureau representative who 
booked me told me my lectures were good 

136 



GO ON SOUTH 

enough. I told him I wanted to get better lec- 
tures, for I was so dissatisfied with what little 
I knew. He told me I could never get any bet- 
ter. I had reached my limit. Those lectures 
were the ''limit." I shiver as I think what I 
was saying then. I want to go on south shiv- 
ering about yesterday. These years I have 
noticed the people on the platform who were 
contented with their offerings, were not trying 
to improve them, and were lost in admiration 
of what they were doing, did not stay long on 
the platform. I have watched them come and 
go, come and go. I have heard their fierce 
invectives against the bureaus and ungrateful 
audiences that were "prejudiced" against 
them. 

Birthdays are not annual affairs. Birthdays 
are the days when we have a new birth. The 
days when we go on south to larger visions. I 
wish I could have a birthday every minute ! 

Some people seem to string out to near a 
hundred years with mighty few birthdays. 
Some people spin up to Methusalehs in a few 
years. 

From what I can learn of Methusaleh, he 
never grew past copper-toed boots. He just 
hibernated and "chawed on." 

The more birthdays we have, the nearer we 
approach eternal youth! 



137 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

Bernhardt, Davis and Edison 

The spectacle of Sarah Bernhardt, past sev- 
enty, thrilling and gripping audiences with the 
fire and brilliancy of youth, is inspiring. No 
obstacle can daunt her. Losing a leg does not 
end her acting, for she remains the "Divine 
Sarah" with no crippling of her work. She 
looks younger than many women of half her 
years. "The years are nothing to me." 

Senator Henry Gassaway Davis, West Vir- 
ginia's Grand Old Man, at ninety-two was 
working as hard and hopefully as any man of 
the multitudes in his employ. He was an ar- 
dent Odd Fellow, and one day at ninety-two — 
just a short time before his passing — he went 
out to the Odd Fellows' Home near Elkins, 
where he lived. On the porch of the home was 
a row of old men inmates. The senator shook 
hands with these men and one by one they rose 
from the bench to return his hearty greetings. 

The last man on the bench did not rise. He 
helplessly looked up at the senator and said, 
"Senator, you'll have to excuse me from get- 
ting up. I'm too old. When you get as old as 
I am, you'll not get up, either." 

"That's all right. But, my man, how old are 
you?" 

"Senator, I'm old in body and old in spirit. 
I'm past sixty." 

"My boy," laughed Senator Davis, "I was an 
Odd Fellow before you were born." 

138 



GO ON SOUTH 

The senator at ninety-two was younger than 
the man "past sixty," because he was going on 
south. 



When I was a little boy I saw them bring 
the first phonograph that Mr. Edison invented 
into the meeting at Lakeside, Ohio. The peo- 
ple cheered when they heard it talk. 

You would laugh at it today. It had a tin- 
foil cylinder, it screeched and stuttered. You 
would not have it in your barn today to play to 
your ford ! 

But the people said, "Mr. Edison has suc- 
ceeded." There was one man who did not be- 
lieve that Mr. Edison had succeeded. His 
name was Thomas Alva Edison. He had got- 
ten to St. Paul, and he went on south. A mil- 
lion people would have stopped there and said, 
"I have arrived." They would have put in 
their time litigating for their rights with other 
people who would have gone on south with the 
phonograph idea. 

Mr. Edison has said that his genius is 
mainly his ability to keep on south. A young 
lady succeeded in getting into his laboratory 
the other day, and she wrote me that the great 
inventor showed her one invention. "I made 
over seven thousand experiments and failed 
before I hit upon that." 
"Why make so many experiments?" 

139 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

"I know more than seven thousand ways 
now that won't work." 

I doubt if there are ten men in America who 
could go on south in the face of seven thousand 
failures. Today he brings forth a diamond- 
pointed phonograph. I am sure if we could 
bring Mr. Edison to this platform and ask him, 
"Have you succeeded?" he would say what he 
has said to reporters and what he said to the 
young lady, "I have not succeeded. I am suc- 
ceeding. All I have done only shows me how 
much there is yet to do." 

That is success supreme. Not "succeeded" 
but "succeeding." 

What a difference between "ed" and "ing"! 
The difference between death and life. Are 
you "ed-ing" or "ing-ing"? 

Sf, «j« ff> 

Moses Begins at Eighty 

Moses, the great Hebrew law-giver, was 
eighty years old before he started south. It 
took him eighty years to get ready. Moses did 
not even get on the back page of the Egyptian 
newspapers till he was eighty. He went on 
south into the extra editions after that! 

If Moses had retired at seventy-nine, we'd 
never have heard of him. If Moses had retired 
to a checkerboard in the grocery store or to 
pitching horseshoes up the alley and talking 
about "ther winter of fifty-four," he would 

140 



GO ON SOUTH 

have become the seventeenth mummy on the 
thirty-ninth row in the green pickle-jar! 

Imagine Moses living today amidst the din 
of the high school orations on "The Age of the 
Young Man" and the Ostler idea that you are 
going down hill at fifty. Imagine Moses living 
on "borrowed time" when he becomes the 
leader of the Israelite host. 

I would see his scandalized friends gather 
around him. "Moses ! Moses ! what is this we 
hear? You going to lead the Israelites to the 
Promised Land? Why, Moses, you are an old 
man. Why don't you act like an old man ? You 
are liable to drop off any minute. Here is a 
pair of slippers. And keep out of the night 
air. It is so hard on old folks." 

I think I would hear Moses say, "No, no, I 
am just beginning to see what to do. Watch 
things happen from now on. Children of 
Israel, forward, march!" 

I see Moses at eighty starting for the Wil- 
derness so fast Aaron can hardly keep up. 
Moses is eighty-five and busier and more en- 
thusiastic than ever. The people say, "Isn't 
Moses dead?" "No." "Well, he ought to be 
dead, for he is old enough." 

They appoint a committee to bury Moses. 
You cannot do anything in America without a 
committee. The committee gets out the invita- 
tions and makes all the arrangements for a 
gorgeous funeral next Thursday. They get 

141 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

ready the resolutions of respect — "Whereas, — 
Whereas, — Resolved, — Resolved." 

Then I see the committee waiting on Moses. 
That is what a committee does — it "waits" on 
something or other. And this committee goes 
up to General Moses* private office. It is his 
busy day. They have to stand in line and wait 
their turn. When they get up to Moses* desk, 
the great prophet says, "Boys, what is it ? Cut 
it short, I'm busy." 

The committee begins to weep. "General 
Moses, you are a very old man. You are 
eighty-five years old and full of honors. We 
are the committee duly authorized to give you 
gorgeous burial. The funeral is to be next 
Thursday. Kindly die." 

I see Moses look over his appointments. 
"Next Thursday? Why, boys, every hour is 
taken next Thursday. I simply cannot attend 
my funeral next Thursday." 

They cannot bury Moses. He cannot attend. 
You cannot bury anybody who is too busy to 
attend his own funeral ! You cannot bury any- 
body until he consents. It is bad manners! 
The committee is so mortified, for all the in- 
vitations are out. It waits. 

Moses is eighty-six and the committee 
'phones over, "Moses, can you attend next 
Thursday?" And Moses says, "No, boys, you'll 
just have to hold that funeral until I get this 

142 



GO ON SOUTH 

work pushed off so I can attend it. I haven't 
even time to think about getting old." 

The committee waits. Moses is ninety and 
rushed more than ever. He is doing ten men's 
work and his friends all say he is killing him- 
self. But he makes the committee wait. 

Moses is ninety-five and burning the candle 
at both ends. He is a hundred. And the com- 
mittee dies! 

Moses goes right on shouting, "Onward!" 
He is a hundred and ten. He is a hundred and 
twenty. Even then I read, "His eye was not 
dim, nor his natural force abated." He had 
not time to stop and abate. 

So God buried him. The committee was 
dead. 0, friends, this is not irreverence; it 
is joyful reverence. It is the message to all of 
us, Go on south to the greater things, and get 
so enthused and absorbed in our going that 
we'll fool the "committee." 



All the multitudes of the Children of Israel 
died in the Wilderness. They were afraid to 
go on south. Only two of them went on south 
— Joshua and Caleb. They put the giants out 
of business. 

The Indians once owned America. But they 
failed to go on south. So another crop of 
Americans came into the limelight. If we 

143 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

modern Americans do not go on south we will 
join the Indians, the auk and the dodo. 



The "Sob Squad" 

I am so sorry for the folks who quit, retire, 
"get on the shelf" or live on "borrowed time." 
They generally join the "sob squad." 

They generally discover the world is "going 
to the dogs." They cry on my shoulder, no 
matter how good clothes I wear. 

They tell me nobody uses them right. The 
person going on south has not time to look 
back and see how anybody uses him. 

They say nobody loves them. Which is 
often a fact. Nobody loves the clock that runs 
down. 

They say, "Only a few more days of trouble, 
only a few more tribulations, and I'll be in that 
bright and happy land." What will they do 
with them when they get them there? They 
would be dill pickles in the heavenly preserve- 
jar. 

They say, "I wish I were a child again. I 
was happy when I was a child and I'm not 
happy now. Them was the best days of my 
life — childhood's palmy days." 

Wake up! Your clock has run down. Any- 
body who wants to be a child again is confess- 
ing he has lost his memory. Anybody who 

144 



GO ON SOUTH 

can remember the horrors of childhood could 
not be hired to live it over again. 

If there is anybody who does not have a good 
time, if there is anybody who gets short- 
changed regularly, it is a child. I am so sorry 
for a child. Hurry up and go on south. It is 
better on south. 



Waiting till the "Second Table" 

I wish I could forget many of my childhood 
memories. I remember the palmy days. And 
the palm! 

I often wonder how I ever lived thru my 
childhood. I would not take my chances living 
it thru again. I am not ungrateful to my par- 
ents. I had advantages. I was born in a par- 
sonage and was reared in the nurture and ad- 
miration of the Lord. I am not just sure I 
quoted that correctly, but I know I was reared 
in a parsonage. About all I inherited was a 
Godly example and a large appetite. That was 
about all there was to inherit. I cannot re- 
member when I was not hungry. I used to go 
around feeling like the Mammoth Cave, never 
thoroly explored. 

I never sit down as "company" at a dinner 
and see some little children going sadly into 
the next room to "wait till the second table" 
that my heart does not go out to them. I re- 
member when I did that. 

145 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

I can only remember about four big meals in 
a year. That was "quart'ly meeting day." 
We always had a big dinner on "quart'ly meet- 
ing day." Elder Berry would stay for dinner. 
His name was Berry, but being "presiding 
elder," we called him Elder Berry. 

Elder Berry always stayed for dinner. He 
was one of the easiest men to get to stay for 
dinner I ever saw. 

Mother would stay home from "quart'ly 
meeting" to get the big dinner ready. She 
would cook up about all the "brethren" 
brought in at the last donation. We had one 
of those stretchable tables, and mother would 
stretch it clear across the room and put on two 
table-cloths. She would lap them over in the 
middle, where the hole was. 

I would watch her get the big dinner ready. 
I would look over the long table and view the 
"promised land." I would see her set on the 
jelly. We had so much jelly — red jelly, and 
white jelly, and blue jelly. I don't just remem- 
ber if they had blue jelly, but if they had it 
we had it on that table. All the jelly that ever 
"jelled" was represented. I didn't know we 
had so much jelly till "quart'ly meeting" day. 
I would watch the jelly tremble. Did you ever 
see jelly tremble? I used to think it ought to 
tremble, for Elder Berry was coming for 
dinner. 

I would see mother put on the tallest pile 

146 



GO ON SOUTH 

of mashed potatoes you ever saw. She would 
make a hollow in the top and fill it with butter. 
I would see the butter melt and run down the 
sides, and I would say, "Hurry, mother, it is 
going to spill!" 0, how I wanted to spill it! 
I could hardly hold out faithful. 

And then Elder Berry would sit down at the 
table, at the end nearest the fried chicken. 
The "company" would sit down. I used to 
wonder why we never could have a big dinner 
but what a lot of "company" had to come and 
gobble it up. They would fill the table and 
father would sit down in the last seat. There 
was no place for me to sit. Father would say, 
"You go into the next room, my boy, and wait. 
There's no room for you at the table." 

The hungriest one of that assemblage would 
have to go in the next room and hear the big 
dinner. Did you ever hear a big dinner when 
you felt like the Mammoth Cave? I used to 
think as I would sit in the next room that 
heaven would be a place where everybody 
would eat at the first table. 

I would watch them thru the key-hole. It 
was going so fast. There was only one piece 
of chicken left. It was the neck. 0, Lord, 
spare the neck! And I would hear them say, 
"Elder Berry, may we help you to another 
piece of the chicken?" 

And Elder Berry would take the neck! 

147 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

Many a time after that, Elder Berry would 
come into the room where I was starving. He 
would say, "Brother Parlette, is this your 
boy?" He would come over to the remains of 
Brother Pariette's boy. He would often put 
his hand in benediction upon my head. 

My head was not the place that needed the 
benediction. 

He would say, "My boy, I want you to have 
a good time now." Now ! When all the chicken 
was gone and he had taken the neck! "My 
boy, you are seeing the best days of your life 
right now as a child." 

The dear old liar! I was seeing the worst 
days of my life. If there is anybody short- 
changed- — if there is anybody who doesn't 
have a good time, it's a child. Life has been 
getting better ever since, and today is the best 
day of all. Go on south ! 



It's Better on South 

Seeing your best days as a child? No! You 
are seeing your worst days. Of course, you 
can be happy as a child. A boy can be happy 
with fuzz on his upper lip, but he'll be hap- 
pier when his lip feels more like mine — like 
a piece of sandpaper. There are chapters of 
happiness undreamed of in his philosophy. 

A child can be full of happiness and only 
148 



GO ON SOUTH 

hold a pint. But afterwhile the same child 
will hold a quart. 

I think I hold a gallon now. And I see peo- 
ple in the audience who must hold a barrel! 
Go on south. Of course, I do not mean circum- 
ference. But every year we go south increases 
our capacity for joy. Our life is one continual 
unfolding as we go south. Afterwhile this old 
world gets too small for us and we go on south 
into a larger one. 

So we cannot grow old. Our life never 
stops. It goes on and on forever. Anything 
that does not stop cannot grow old or have 
age. Material things will grow old. This 
stage will grow old and stop. This hall will 
grow old and stop. This house we live in will 
grow old and stop. This flesh and blood house 
we live in will grow old and stop. This lecture 
even will grow old — and stop! But you and I 
will never grow old, for God cannot grow old. 
You and I will go on living as long as God lives. 

I am not worried today over what I do not 
know. I used to be worried. I used to say, 
"I have not time to answer you now !" But to- 
day it is such a relief to look people in the face 
and say, "I do not know." 

And I have to say that to many questions, 
"I do not know." I often think if people in an 
audience only knew how little I know, they 
would not stay to hear me. 

But some day I shall know! I patiently 

149 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

wait for the answer. Every day brings the 
answer to something I could not answer yes- 
terday. 

It will take an eternity to know an infinity! 

What a wonderful happiness to go on south 
to it! 

Overcoming Obstacles Develops Power 

As the Mississippi River goes on south he 
finds obstacles along the way. You and I find 
obstacles along our way south. What shall we 
do? 

Go to Keokuk, Iowa, for your answer. 

They have built a great concrete obstacle 
clear across the path of the river. It is many 
feet high, and many, many feet long. The 
river cannot go on south. Watch him. He 
rises higher than the obstacle and sweeps over 
it on south. 

Over the great power dam at Keokuk 
sweeps the Mississippi. And then you see the 
struggle of overcoming the obstacle develops 
light and power to vitalize the valley. A hun- 
dred towns and cities radiate the light and 
power from the struggle. The great city of 
St. Louis, many miles away, throbs with the 
victory. 

So that is why they spent the millions to 
build the obstacle — to get the light and the 
power. The light and the power were latent 

150 



GO ON SOUTH 

in the river, but it took the obstacle and the 
overcoming to develop it and make it useful. 

That is exactly what happens when you and 
I overcome our obstacles. We develop our 
light and power. We are rivers of light and 
power, but it is all latent and does no good until 
we overcome obstacles as we go on south. 

Obstacles are the power stations on our way 
south ! 

And where the most obstacles are, there you 
find the most power to be developed. So many 
of us do not understand that. We look south- 
ward and we see the obstacles in the road. "I 
am so unfortunate. I could do these great 
things, but alas! I have so many obstacles in 
the way." 

Thank God! You are blessed of Provi- 
dence. They do not waste the obstacles. The 
presence of the obstacles means that there is 
a lot of light and power in you to be developed. 
If you see no obstacles, you are confessing to 
blindness. 

I hear people saying, "I hope the time may 
speedily come when I shall have no more ob- 
stacles to overcome!" When that time comes, 
ring up the hearse, for you will be a "dead 
one." 



Life is going on south, and overcoming the 
obstacles. Death is merely quitting. 

151 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

The fact that we are not buried is no proof 
that we are alive. Go along the street in al- 
most any town and see the dead ones. There 
they are decorating the hitching-racks and fes- 
tooning the storeboxes. There they are block- 
ing traffic at the postoffice and depot. There 
they are in the hotel warming the chairs and 
making the guests stand up. There they are 
— rows of retired farmers who have quit work 
and moved to town to block improvements and 
die. But they will never need anything more 
than burying. 

For they are dead from the ears up. They 
have not thought a new thought the past 
month. Sometimes they sit and think, but 
generally they just sit. They have not gone 
south an inch the past year. 

Usually the deadest loafer is married to the 
livest woman. Nature tries to maintain an 
equilibrium. 

They block the wheels of progress and get 
in the way of the people trying to go on south. 
They say of the people trying to do things. 
"Aw, he's always tryin' to run things." 

They do not join in to promote the churches 
and schools and big brother movements. They 
growl at the lyceum courses and chautauquas, 
because they "take money outa town." They 
do not take any of their money "outa town." 
Ringling and Barnum & Bailey get theirs. 

I do not smile as I refer to the dead. I 
152 



GO ON SOUTH 

weep. I wish I could squirt some "pep" into 
them and start them on south. 

But all this lecture has been discussing this, 
so I hurry on to the last glimpse of the book 
in the running brook. 



Go on South From Principle 

Here we come to the most wonderful and dif- 
ficult thing in life. It is the supreme test of 
character. That is, Why go on south? Not 
for blessing nor cursing, not for popularity 
nor for selfish ends, not for anything outside, 
but for the happiness that comes from within. 

The Mississippi blesses the valley every 
day as he goes on south and overcomes. But 
the valley does not bless the river in return. 
The valley throws its junk back upon the river. 
The valley pours its foul, muddy, poisonous 
streams back upon the Mississippi to defile 
him. The Mississippi makes St. Paul and Min- 
neapolis about all the prosperity they have, 
gives them power to turn their mills. But the 
Twin Cities merely throw their waste back 
upon their benefactor. 

The Mississippi does not resign. He does 
not tell a tale of woe. He does not say, "I am 
not appreciated. My genius is not understood. 
I am not going a step farther south. I am 
going right back to Lake Itasca." No, he does 
not even go to live with his father-in-law. 
153 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

He says, "Thank you. Every little helps, 
send it all along." Go a few miles below the 
Twin Cities and see how, by some mysterious 
alchemy of Nature, the Mississippi has 4*ken 
over all the poison and the defilement, h£ lias 
purified it and clarified it, and has made it a 
part of himself. And he is greater and far- 
ther south! 

He fattens upon bumps. Kick him, and you 
push him farther south. "Hand him a lemon/' 
and he makes lemonade. 

Civilization conspires to defeat the Missis- 
sippi. Chicago's drainage canal pollutes him. 
The flat, lazy Platte, three miles wide and three 
inches deep ; the peevish, destructive Kaw, and 
all those streams that unite to form the 
treacherous, sinful, irresponsible lower Mis- 
souri ; the big, muddy Ohio, the Arkansas, the 
Red, the black and the blue floods — all these 
pour into the Mississippi. 

Day by day the Father of Waters goes on 
south, taking them over and purifying them 
and making them a part of himself. Nothing 
can discourage, divert nor defile him. No mat- 
ter how poisonous he becomes, he goes a few 
miles on south and he is all pure again. 



Wonderful the book in the running brook! 
We let our life stream become poisoned by bit- 
ter memories and bitter regrets. We carry 

154 



GO ON SOUTH 

along such a heart full of the injuries that 
other people have done us, that sometimes we 
are bank to bank full of poison and a menace 
*^ ^ose around us. We say, "I can forgive, 
* cannot forget." 

Oh, forget it ! Drop it all. Purify your life 
and go on south all sweet again. We forget 
what we ought to remember and remember 
what we ought to forget. We need schools of 
memory, but we need schools of forgettery, 
even more. 

As you go on south and bless your valley, 
do you notice the valley does not bless you 
very much? Have you sadly noted that the 
people you help the most often are the least 
grateful in return? 

Don't wait to be thanked. Hurry on to 
avoid the kick! Do good to others because 
that is the way to be happy, but do not wait 
for a receipt for your goodness ; you will need 
a poultice every time you wait. I know, for I 
have waited! 



We get so discouraged. We say, "I have 
gone far enough south." There is nobody who 
does not have that to meet. The preacher, the 
teacher, the editor, the man in office, the busi- 
ness man, the father and mother — every one 
who tries to carry on the work of the church, 
the school, the lyceum and chautauqua, the 

155 



\ 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

work that makes for a better community, gets 
discouraged at times. 

We fail to see what we are doing or why we 
are doing it. Sometimes we sit down com- 
pletely discouraged and say, "I'm done. I'm 
going to quit. I have done my share. Nobody 
appreciates what I do. Let somebody else do 
it awhile." 

Stop! You are not saying that. The evil 
one is whispering that into your heart. His 
business is to stop you from going south. His 
most successful tool is discouragement, which 
is a wedge, and if he can get the sharp edge 
started into your thought, he is going to drive 
it deeper. 

You do not go south and overcome your ob- 
stacles and bless the valley for praise or blame, 
for appreciation or lack of it. You do it to live. 
You do it to remain a living river and not a 
stagnant, unhappy pond or swamp. 

YOU ARE SAVING YOURSELF BY SAV- 
ING OTHERS. GO ON SOUTH! 



Almost everybody is deceived. We work 
from mixed motives. We fool ourselves that 
we are working to do good, when as we do the 
good, if we are not praised or thanked for it, 
if people do not present us a medal or resolu- 
tions, we want to quit. That is why there are 

156 



GO ON SOUTH 

so many disappointed and disgruntled people 
in the world. They worked for outside thanks 
instead of inside thanks. They were trying to 
be personal saviours. They say this is an un- 
grateful world. 

0, how easy it is to say these things, and 
how hard it is to do them! 



Reaching the Gulf 

But because the Mississippi does these 
things, one day the train I was riding stopped 
in Louisiana. We had come to a river so 
great science has not yet been able to put a 
bridge across it. 

I watched them pile the steel train upon a 
ferry-boat. I watched the boat crossing a 
river more than a mile wide. Standing upon 
the ferry-boat, I could look down into the 
lordly river and then far north perhaps fifteen 
hundred miles to the little struggling stream- 
let starting southward thru the forests of 
Minnesota, there writing the first chapter 
of this wonderful book in the running brook. 

I thank God that I had gone a little farther 
southward in my own life. Father of Waters, 
you have fought a good fight. You are con- 
quering gloriously. You bear upon your 
bosom the commerce of many nations. I 
know why. I saw you born, saw your strug- 
gles, saw you get in the right channel, saw 

157 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

you learn the lessons of your knocks, and saw 
that you never stopped going southward. 

And may we read it into our own lives. May 
we get the vision of which way to go, and then 
keep on going south — on and on, overcoming, 
getting the lessons of the bumps, the strength 
from the struggle and thus making it a part 
of ourselves, and thus growing greater. 



Go on South Forever! 

Where shall we stop going south? At the 
Gulf of Mexico? 

The Mississippi knows nothing about the 
gulf. He goes on south until he reaches the 
gulf. Then he pushes right on into the gulf 
as tho nothing had happened. So he pushes 
his physical banks on south many miles right 
out into the gulf. 

And when he comes to the end of his physi- 
cal banks, he pushes on south into the gulf, 
and goes on south round and round the globe. 

When you and I come to our Gulf of Mexico, 
we must push right on south. So we push our 
physical banks years farther into the gulf. 
And when physical banks fail, we go on south 
beyond this mere husk, into the great Gulf of 
the Beyond, to go on south unfolding thru 
eternity. 

WE NEVER STOP GOING SOUTH. 
158 



X 

Going Up Life's Mountain 

The Defeats that are Victories 

HOW often we say, "I wish I had a mil- 
lion !" Perhaps it is a blessing that we 
have not the million. Perhaps it would 
make us lazy, selfish and unhappy. Perhaps we 
would go around giving it to other people to 
make them lazy, selfish and unhappy. 

O, the problem is not how to get money, but 
how to get rid of money with the least injury 
to the race ! 

Perhaps getting the million would completely 
spoil us. Look at the wild cat and then look at 
the tabby cat. The wild cat supports itself and 
the tabby cat has its million. So the tabby cat 
has to be doctored by specialists. 

If the burden were lifted from most of us we 
would go to wreck. Necessity is the ballast in 
our life voyage. 

When you hear the orator speak and you note 
the ease and power of his work, do you think of 
the years of struggle he spent in preparing? 
Do you ever think of the times that orator tried 
to speak when he failed and went back to his 
room in disgrace, mortified and broken-hearted ? 
Thru it all there came the discipline, experience 
and grim resolve that made him succeed. 

159 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

When you hear the musician and note the ease 
and grace of the performance, do you think of 
the years of struggle and overcoming necessary 
to produce that finish and grace? That is the 
story of the actor, the author and every other 
one of attainment 

Do you note that the tropics, the countries 
with the balmiest climates, produce the weak- 
est peoples ? Do you note that the conquering 
races are those that struggle with both heat and 
cold? The tropics are the geographical Gussie- 
lands. 

Do you note that people grow more in lean 
years than in fat years? Crop failures and 
business stringencies are not calamities, but 
blessings in disguise. People go to the devil 
with full pockets ; they turn to God when hunger 
hits them. "Is not this Babylon that I have 
builded ?" says the Belshazzar of material pros- 
perity as he drinks to his gods. Then must 
come the Needful and Needless Knocks hand- 
writing upon the wall to save him. 

You have to shoot many men's eyes out be- 
fore they can see. You have to crack their 
heads before they can think, knock them 
down before they can stand, break their 
hearts before they can sing, and bankrupt 
them before they can be rich. 

Do you remember that they had to lock John 
Bunyan in Bedford jail before he would write 
his immortal "Pilgrim's Progress"? It may be 

160 



GOING UP LIFE'S MOUNTAIN 

that some of us will have to go to jail to do our 
best work. 

Do you remember that one musician became 
deaf before he wrote music the world will al- 
ways hear? Do you remember that one author 
became blind before writing "Paradise Lost" 
the world will always read? 

Do you remember that Saul of Tarsus would 
have never been remembered had he lived the 
life of luxury planned for him? He had to be 
blinded before he could see the way to real suc- 
cess. He had to be scourged and fettered to be- 
come the Apostle to the Gentiles. He, too, had 
to be sent to prison to write his immortal mes- 
sages to humanity. What throne-rooms are 
some prisons! And what prisons are some 
throne-rooms ! 

Do you not see all around you that success is 
ever the phoenix rising from the ashes of de- 
feat? 

Then, children, when you stand in the row of 
graduates on commencement day with your di- 
plomas in your hands, and when your relatives 
and friends say, "Success to you !" I shall take 
your hand and say, "Defeat to you ! And strug- 
gles to you ! And bumps to you !" 

For that is the only way to say, "Success to 
you!" 



161 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

Go Up the Mountain 

O UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS, 
we learn to love you more with each 
passing year. We learn that you are 
cruel only to be kind. We learn &at you are 
saving us from ourselves. But 0, how most 
of us must be bumped to see this! 

I know no better way to close this lecture 
than to tell you of a great bump that struck 
me one morning in Los Angeles. It seemed as 
tho twelve years of my life had dropped out of 
it, and had been lost. 

Were you ever bumped so hard you were 
numb? I was numb. I wondered why I was 
living. I thought I had nothing more to live 
for. When a dog is wounded he crawls away 
alone to lick his wounds. I felt like the 
wounded dog. I wanted to crawl away to lick 
my wounds. 

That is why I climbed Mount Lowe that day. 
I wanted to get alone. 



It is a wonderful experience to climb Mount 
Lowe. The tourists go up half a mile into Rubio 
Canyon, to the engineering miracle, the tri- 
angular car that hoists them out of the hungry 
chasm thirty-five hundred feet up the side of a 
granite cliff, to the top of Echo Mountain. 

Here they find that Echo Mountain is but 
162 



GOING UP LIFE'S MOUNTAIN 

a shelf on the side of Mount Lowe. Here they 
take an electric car that winds five miles on 
towards the sky. There is hardly a straight 
rail in the track. Every minute a new thrill, 
and no two thrills alike. Five miles of winding 
and squirming, twisting and ducking, dodging 
and summersaulting. 

There are places where the tourist wants to 
grasp his seat and lift. There is a wooden 
shelf nailed to the side of the perpendicular 
rockwall where his life depends upon the hon- 
esty of the man who drove the nails. He may 
wonder if the man was working by the day 
or by the job! He looks over the edge of the 
shelf downward, and then turns to the other 
side to look at the face of the cliff they are hug- 
ging, and discovers there is no place to resign ! 

The car is five thousand feet high where it 
stops on that last shelf, Alpine Tavern. One 
cannot ride farther upward. This is not the 
isummit, but just where science surrenders. 
There is a little trail that winds upward from 
Alpine Tavern to the summit. It is three miles 
long and rises eleven hundred feet. 

To go up that last eleven hundred feet and 
stand upon the flat rock at the summit of Mount 
Lowe is to get a picture so wonderful it cannot 
be described with this poor human vocabulary. 
It must be lived. On a pure, clear day one 
looks down this sixty-one hundred feet, more 
than a mile, into the orange belt of Southern 

163 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

California. It spreads out below in one great 
mosaic of turquoise and amber and emerald, 
where the miles seem like inches, and where his 
field-glass sweeps one panoramic picture of a 
hundred miles or more. 

Just below is Pasadena and Los Angeles. To 
the westward perhaps forty miles is the blue 
stretch of the Pacific Ocean, on westward the 
faint outlines of Catalina Islands. The ocean 
seems so close one could throw a pebble over 
into it. How a mountain does reduce distances. 
You throw the pebble and it falls upon your 
toes! 

And Mount Lowe is but a shelf on the side of 
the higher Sierras. The granite mountains rise 
higher to the northward, and to the east rises 
"Old Baldy," twelve thousand feet high and 
snow eternally on his head. 

This is one of the workshops of the infinite ! 



All alone I scrambled up that three-mile trail 
to the summit. All alone I stood upon the flat 
rock at the summit and looked down into the 
swimming distances. I did not know why I had 
struggled up into that mountain sanctuary, for 
I was not searching for sublimity. I was 
searching for relief. I was heartsick. 

I saw clouds down in the valley below me. I 
had never before looked down upon clouds. I 
thought of the cloud that had covered me in the 

164 



GOING UP LIFE'S MOUNTAIN 

valley below, and dully watched the clouds 
spread wider and blacker. 

Afterwhile the valley was all hidden by the 
clouds. I knew rain must be falling down there. 
The people must be saying, "The sun doesn't 
shine. The sky is all gone." But I saw the 
truth — the sun was shining. The sky was in 
place. A cloud had covered down over that first 
mile. The sun was shining upon me, the sky 
was all blue over me, and there were millions 
of miles of sunshine above me. I could see all 
this because I had gone above the valley. I 
could see above the clouds. 

A great light seemed to break over my storm- 
swept soul. I am under the clouds of trouble 
today, BUT THE SUN IS SHINING! 

I must go on up the mountain to see it. 

The years have been passing, the stormclouds 
have many times hidden my sun. But I have al- 
ways found the sun shining above them. No 
matter how black and sunless today, when I 
have struggled on up the mountain path, I have 
gotten above the clouds and found the sun for- 
ever shining and God forever in His heavens. 

Each day as I go up the mountain I get a 
larger vision. The miles that seem so great 
down in the valley, seem so small as I look down 
upon them from higher up. Each day as I look 
back I see more clearly the plan of a human 
life. The rocks, the curves and the struggles fit 

165 



? 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

into a divine engineering plan to soften the 
steepness of the ascent. The bumps are lifts. 
The things that seem so important down in the 
smudgy, stormswept valley, seem so unimport- 
ant as we go higher up the mountain to more 
important things. 

Today I look back to the bump that sent me 
up Mount Lowe. I did not see how I could live 
past that bump. The years have passed and I 
now know it was one of the greatest blessings 
of my life. It closed one gate, but it opened an- 
other gate to a better pathway up the mountain. 

Late that day I was clambering down the side 
of Mount Lowe. Down in the valley below me 
I saw shadows. Then I looked over into the 
southwest and I could see the sun going down. 
I could see him sink lower and lower until his 
red lips kissed the cheek of the Pacific. The 
glory of the sunset filled sea and sky with 
flames of gold and fountains of rainbows. 
Such a sunset from the mountain-side is a 
promise of heaven. 

The shadows of sunset widened over the val- 
ley. Presently all the valley was black with the 
shadow. It was night down there. The people 
were saying, "The sun doesn't shine." But it 
was not night where I stood. I was farther up 
the mountain. I turned and looked up to the 
summit. The beams of the setting sun were yet 
gilding Mount Lowe's summit. It was night 

166 



GOING UP LIFE'S MOUNTAIN 

down in the valley, but it was day on the 
mountain top ! 



Go on south ! 

That means, go on up ! 

Child of humanity, are you in the storm? Go 
on upward. Are you in the night? Go on up- 
ward. 

For the peace and the light are always above 
the storm and the night, and always in our 
reach. 

I am going on upward. Take my hand and 
let us go together. Mount Lowe showed the way 
that dark day. There I heard the "sermons in 
stones." 

Some day my night will come. It will spread 
over all this valley of material things where the 
storms have raged. 

But I shall be on the mountain top. I shall 
look down upon the night, as I am learning to 
climb and look down upon the storms. I shall 
be in the new day of the mountain-top, forever 
above the night. 

I shall find this mountain-top just another 
shelf on the side of the Mountain of Infinite Un- 
folding. I shall have risen perhaps only the first 
mile. I shall have millions of miles yet to rise. 

167 



THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS 

This will be another Commencement Day and 
Master's Degree. Infinite the number on up. 
"Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither 
have entered into the heart of man, the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love 
Him. ,, 

We are not growing old. We are going up to 
Eternal Life. 

Rejoice and Go Upward ! 



ANOTHER BEGINNING 



168 



The Lyceum and 

Chautauqua 

Movement 



Ralph Parlette 
A Pen-Picture 

Of the many descriptions of Ralph Par- 
lette in his platform work that have ap- 
peared in the newspapers the past twenty 
years, none have put it better than Editor 
Gleason A. Dudley of Walthill, Nebraska, 
in the following from his report of the 
Chautauqua there: 

"Ralph Parlette! Who will unravel the 
mystery of this man's power or disclose 
the secret of his genius? Lacking every 
grace cultivated by public speakers, this 
paradox of the platform eclipses them all. 
He takes the commonplace fact of daily 
life, clothes it with homely language, 
breathes into it his own grotesque per- 
sonality, and by some alchemy of genius 
unfolds a great truth of beauty and power. 
From the metallurgy of his crude experi- 
ence, he fashions a mirror in which every 
man discovers his own image. He makes a 
new garment from the old cloth, but the 
fit is perfect and the cloth is clean. 

"Parlette is a combination of paradoxes. 
He is awkward to the point of graceful- 
ness; attractive in his homeliness; naive, 
yet brimming with wisdom; the intellect 
and body of a man with the temperament 
and physiognomy of a boy. The audience 
laughs at, sympathizes with, and at length 
pays homage to his incongruities, and de- 
parts under the spell of a magnetism that 
defies analysis. It has feasted at a ban- 
quet whose delicacies were the wholesome 
viands of everyday life. 

"Everyone you meet is still talking Par- 
lette, yet not one will concretely tell you 
why." 



The Lyceum and Chautauqua 
Movement 

SEE the people gather around the orator! They 
hang upon his words. He wields a power the 
printing-press can never take from him. The 
spoken word has a weight the printed word can 
never have, for back of it is the added power of the 
speaker's life. 

The lyceum and chautauqua movement brings ora- 
tors and audiences together. Today there is scarcely 
a village, town or city that does not have its lyceum 
course or chautauqua. It is estimated that there are 
now nearly 5,000 chautauquas and over 15,000 lyceum 
courses held each year. 

The lyceum and chautauqua platforms call the 
leaders of thought and action to speak to the au- 
diences of America. They call statesmen, preachers, 
writers, reformers, inventors, discoverers and every 
man with a message to his fellows. It is the one 
free forum of America. 

Hand in hand with the progress of the church and 
the school goes this movement. The late Bishop 
Robert Mclntyre called the lyceum the child of the 
church and the chautauqua the lyceum in summer 
dress. Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt says the 
chautauqua is the most American thing in America. 

The lyceum and chautauqua are managed by local 
citizens who have the good of their communities at 
heart. In the management are ministers, teachers, 
religious and fraternal societies who donate their serv- 
ices for the good of the community. 

171 



LYCEUM AND CHAUTAUQUA MOVEMENT 

The lyceum and chautauqua are never run for pe- 
cuniary gain. Thus they differ from shows and 
amusement enterprises which are under private man- 
agement for gain. The show relies upon its drawing 
power as an amusement. The lyceum and chautauqua 
do not have the show drawing power at the gate. In- 
deed, if they do, they are getting away from their 
ideals. They therefore are sustained by advance sea- 
son tickets and local guarantors. 

They have grown as they have given the man with 
the real message an opportunity to be heard. They 
have grown as they have added the best in reading, 
impersonation, music and entertainment. They have 
died where they have added to their programs freaks 
and sensationalists and other appeals for gate-money. 

Bureaus Have Multiplied Them 

The old time lecture course was born in New Eng- 
land when the nation was young. It began as a de- 
bating society. Gradually outside speakers were 
brought in. Into the history of its development were 
written the names of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wendell 
Phillips, Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, John B. 
Gough, Frederick Douglass, Henry Ward Beecher, Ed- 
ward Everett Hale, Theodore Parker, Horace Gree- 
ley, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, 
Bayard Taylor, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 
William Lloyd Garrison, Mary A. Livermore, Robert 
Collyer, Anna Dickinson and a host of the illustrious 
national leaders. 

The lyceum and chautauqua movement today is the 
successor to the old lecture course, and it has multi- 
plied the number on the platform a hundredfold. The 
old committees would write direct to the speakers, but 
today many lyceum and chautauqua bureaus are or- 

172 



LYCEUM AND CHAUTAUQUA MOVEMENT 

ganized to increase and facilitate the work. Located 
in our principal cities there are bureaus today who 
prepare lists of talent and advertising and send the 
representatives into the field to organize committees. 
So it comes about that instead of a town here and 
there with a few citizens sufficiently interested to or- 
ganize and put on a lecture course on their own 
initiative, today nearly all the towns have lyceum 
courses and chautauquas organized and directed by the 
bureaus and their representatives in cooperation with 
the local leaders. 

The chautauqua, as it has been multiplied over the 
United States, gets its name from Chautauqua Insti- 
tution on Lake Chautauqua, New York, founded by 
Bishop John H. Vincent in 1874. That is an all-sum- 
mer assembly with educational features. It has been 
patterned after at many favored spots by local as- 
semblies. It remained for the genius of the bureau- 
men to organize circuits embracing scores and even 
hundreds of towns and to furnish to each programs 
of three to eight or more days. Thus they bring in 
tents to millions who could not visit the permanent 
assemblies, the good features of their programs — the 
lectures, concerts and entertainments. 

Not only the greatest speakers of the nation and of 
the world, but the great opera singers, the great ac- 
tors, and even entire grand opera companies, theatri- 
cal companies, and bands, some of the stars traveling 
from town to town in their private cars, are regular 
chautauqua circuit features today. 

The lyceum and chautauqua movement continues 
to grow, and is today more popular than ever before. 
It will endure so long as its programs hold to the 
high ideals of the founders, so long as it works in har- 
mony with the church and the school, and avoids the 
sensational, the questionable and the tawdry. 

173 



LYCEUM AND CHAUTAUQUA MOVEMENT 



About Platform Lecturers 

Few successful writers have been successful 
speakers. Few successful speakers have been suc- 
cessful writers. The styles are different. The writ- 
ing style is too condensed for speaking. The audience 
hears more slowly than the reader takes it in from 
the printed page. About the first thing the man who 
takes the platform learns is that the speech he has 
written out and memorized must be "diluted" with 
more words to "get it over" to the audience. 

"Getting it over" is the test of the speaker's ability 
to lecture. He may have a worthy lecture, but he 
may be utterly unable to deliver it in a way to interest 
an audience. There may be places where the lecturer 
may not be required to be entertaining, but the lec- 
turer who goes before lyceum audiences must be enter- 
taining as well as instructive, else he cannot stay 
there. 

Most lecturers do not stay long upon the platform 
at best. Many of them are celebrities the people do 
not care to hear more than once. There is no profes- 
sional lyceum lecturer. The platform is only a place 
to stand while the speaker brings his audience his 
message or the fruits of his research in other fields. 

The inspirational lecturer is the one the people will 
come to hear over and over. His lecture goes down 
into the fundamentals of life and ministers cheer and 
courage to the hearers. A good example of the in- 
spirational lecturer is Russell ConwelPs "Acres of 
Diamonds." Not long ago Dr. Conwell gave this lec- 
ture for the 5,000th time. It was in the city of Phila- 
delphia, his home. A great audience gathered, and 
the governors and their representatives from many 
states attended. There were messages of congratula- 
tion from many great men of the nation. The keys of 

174 



LYCEUM AND CHAUTAUQUA MOVEMENT 

the city were turned over to Dr. Conwell, and he was 
acclaimed the most distinguished citizen of the city. 
A purse of $5,000 was presented him, made up of dol- 
lar subscriptions from his admirers over the land. 

Dr. Conwell has given the receipts from his lec- 
tures, nearly a million dollars, to helping worthy stu- 
dents through various colleges. 

In 1915 "Acres of Diamonds" was put in book form 
and in two years 50,000 copies have been purchased 
by the public. 

Another notable example of an inspirational lecture 
is Lou J. Beauchamp's "Take the Sunny Side," which 
has been delivered over 5,000 times. 

One of the great lyceum and chautauqua lecturers 
is William Jennings Bryan, who is said to be one of 
the few men who can draw his fee at the gate. 

Multitudes of speakers come and go. Few remain 
longer than a season. Fine presence, scholarship, 
grace and culture are all helpful, but the audience de- 
mands first of all that the speaker have a real mes- 
sage hot from the laboratories of his own experience, 
and that he be absolutely sincere in its delivery. 

The lyceum lecturer may have from 50 to 100 or 
even 150 winter engagements, and may have as many 
as 100 chautauqua engagements. So his is the rare 
privilege of shaping the thought of many thousands. 



175 



ANOTHER LECTURE-BOOK 

By Ralph Parlette 

"Big Business" 

A BOOK OF REJOICING 

[F YOU HAVE READ "THE UNIVERSITY 
OF HARD KNOCKS" YOU WILL WANT 
"BIG BUSINESS," THE SECOND OF 
RALPH PARLETTE'S LECTURES TO BE 
PUBLISHED IN BOOK FORM. 

' D IG BUSINESS " stands as a guide-post 
f^ where all the world travels, pointing the 
^"^ way to Success and Happiness. It is not 
a book of advice nor preaching — IT IS A BOOK 
OF REJOICING. It is a discovery of the Gold 
Mines of Joy right where everybody can dig. 

What is success? Have you found it? 
How do you know? What is happiness? Where 
do we find it? Is happiness for everybody? 
Can all people be equally successful and happy, 
or just a fortunate few? 

What is work? What is play? What is art? 
What is our pay? Who is it that says, "Life is 
a failure*'? 

There is nobody on earth who cannot get a 
new cheer by reading "Big Business," and get- 
ting into it. _________ 

Boards similar in size and binding to "The University 
of Hard Knocks, " and at the same price $1 .00 net. 

PARLETTE -PADGET COMPANY 

122 So. Michigan Ave. - Chicago, 111. 

"BIG BUSINESS" WILL BE READY FOR DELIVERY ON 
AND AFTER SEPTEMBER 1, 1917 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 



